


Tales of the Interior Circle

by aladyinbooks



Series: Across the Universe [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, M/M, Masturbation, Mating Rituals, One Shot, Possessive Behavior, Sirens, Smut, Soul Bond, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2020-04-23 16:46:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19155031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aladyinbooks/pseuds/aladyinbooks
Summary: It is illogical, he knows. The visceral reaction to the mastery of Jason's words, to the rain-slick pink of his lips, and the razor sharpness of his mind is not rational.And yet.And yet he wants, in a way he never has before meeting this human.A collection of oneshots from theIcarus, Burninguniverse. Some smutty, some not. Mostly M/M, with an occasional deviation into M/F. No real prior knowledge is necessary, further warnings at the start of each chapter.





	1. 'Til Human Voices Wake Us (And We Drown)

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so this came about because some of the amazing readers for _Icarus, Burning_ suggested some very good ideas for some oneshots and spin offs. Thank you so much guys, you are brilliant!
> 
> Full credit for chapter one goes to the genius [XPerimental](https://archiveofourown.org/users/XPerimental/pseuds/XPerimental), who said: _And Samiel talking about videos about Jay?? I would sincerely love if you should ever write a side one-shot from Samiel's pov from when he makes time to watch that, alone, like whoa._ What can I say? The idea really stuck with me! :D Chapter title from T.S. Eliot.
> 
> Warnings: masturbation, fantasising, Samiel's unhealthy coping methods. This takes place before the start of the main _Icarus_ story.

“That songless carrion eater has done it again,” Littien says as she passes Samiel in the corridor. “He's stood down an entire battalion of Creets.” She hisses, disapproving. “You really should have killed him when you had the chance, Tremark.”

She doesn't let Samiel reply, instead continuing on her way towards the Queen's antechambers.

Her words lodge under Samiel's skin, burning.

A battalion of Creets.

His master has talked down an entire battalion of them.

Later, in the privacy of his own room, he flicks on his own commlink, transferring the image to his screen with shaking fingers, because he has to know. Even though Jason betrayed him, even though the sharp ache of that will never disappear, he has to know what happened.

The footage is shaky, blurred, and the sound slightly distorted from the way it has been taken on bodycam. 

But it is clear enough.

It is pouring – driving sheets of rain that turn everything to mud, plastering clothes to skin. The Creets are ranged on one side, the lengths of their segmented torsos gleaming slick in the artificial lights that have been set up. Standing against them is a troop of Raxians, dull-eyed and stooped with exhaustion. And between them...

 _Oh_. Samiel inhales, sharply.

Jason's hair is like a beacon under the lights, a fire-tinged halo as he turns to listen to something one of the Raxians says. From this angle you can't see his eyes, but Samiel knows the colour of them perfectly, the silver-sharp mist of them imprinted into his bones.

 _“Of course,”_ his master says on screen, and the sound of him is like a salzon blade through the gut, burning.

 _“We have you surrounded,”_ one of the Creets chitters, and Samiel watches, wide-eyed and wanting, as Jason turns back to look at it. _“This display is useless when we can take what we want.”_

Jason smiles at that and, oh, _oh_ , there is the diamond-hard edge to his master that so many people overlook. Samiel can see it in the slant of his lips; in the tilt of his head as he considers this statement. He stands, straight and confident, powerful in his contempt as he stares at the Creet.

There is something mesmerising about Jason like this; something of a primeval god, callous in its disdain for lesser creatures, as it watches from behind the eyes of a thirty year old man, who has seen far too much in his short life. It is breathtaking in a way that catches in Samiel's throat, as he follows the lines of Jason's shoulders, the length of his neck.

 _“No display is useless,”_ Jason is saying pleasantly, and the sound of his voice over the rain is slow, gentle, deceptive. _“You have agreed to this meeting, so there must be something you want.”_

 _“Total surrender,”_ the Creet buzzes.

His master examines his nails, idly. The casualness of the gesture has Samiel leaning forwards against his will, pressing closer to the screen as though he can reach out and touch. He wants to press careful fingers to the slick skin of Jason's arm, to pull him close and feel the warmth of his body through the thin, wet material of his uniform shirt.

 _“No,”_ Jason says.

_“Then we will destroy this hive completely, and you with it, little man.”_

_“Ask yourself,”_ Jason says, _“why I am standing here. If I thought this to be a hopeless endeavour, I wouldn't have bothered. But look at me, I'm confident. There's a reason you haven't been succeeding so far, and I'm it.”_ He says all this blandly, as though he is discussing the weather, or the state of the current economy on Gendris. _“And incidentally, you're not the only one with a scorched ground protocol if this all goes wrong. I suggest you factor that into your deliberations.”_

What feels like a lifetime ago, Samiel had been on the end of that cool, blank disdain; the polite aggression. He had watched as the stunning creature in blue had stared at him from across a hangar, his face as empty as the Maa-Ilian desert, and he had wanted quite desperately to ruffle that composure. Where others believe his master's apparent disinterest to be dismissal, Samiel has always taken it as a challenge.

He thinks, then, of what it would take to make Jason lose his composure. There is a deep-seated part of himself that is wilfully blind to all that his master has done – that would like nothing more than to hunt this man to the ends of the universe, to hold him down and beg him to divulge what he wants; what Samiel can do to please him.

 _“You're lying,”_ the Creet says on the screen, breaking Samiel's reverie.

 _“I might be,”_ Jason says, spreading his hands slowly. He pauses, and Samiel can see the way he considers carefully the impact of his next words. _“But I might not be. Do you want to find out?”_

 _“Are you challenging us?”_ the Creet asks, bending its plated torso until it is much closer, almost eye-level with Jason. _“Do you want to bring our fury down on your head as well, little human? Your words are not truth: your Parliament would never allow for the murder of two races of peoples.”_ It chitters again, mandibles clacking as it watches Jason. 

Jason leans up, leans closer, teeth bared in a hard-edged grin. _“My Parliament is not here,”_ he says. _“I don't suggest you test me.”_

There is something utterly alien and incomprehensible and human about him, and it sets Samiel's blood singing in a way he is not familiar with. There is a slow, rolling anger deep in his soul; a vicious need to breach the space across stars, until he is standing in front of his master.

 _I am here_ , he wants to say. _Look at me instead. Let me give you anything you want, my darling, anything at all_.

It is illogical, he knows. The visceral reaction to the mastery of Jason's words, to the rain-slick pink of his lips, and the razor sharpness of his mind is not rational.

And yet.

And yet he wants, in a way he never has before meeting this human. 

There is heat, pooling low in Samiel's stomach, spreading to his fingertips and up. He can almost see himself there, can see the way Jason would turn to look at him, effortlessly calm in the face of near-certain death.

 _Tell me what to do_ , Samiel wants to say. _Please, just tell me what will make you mine_.

This is a selfish love, a covetous, greedy one. He knows this; knows too that he can never have what he wants, not really. Jason has betrayed him, betrayed peace and the means to end the war, and has only been stopped before with Samiel's blade through his side.

 _“You will let us consider your demands,”_ the Creet says on the screen, and Samiel watches as his master inclines his head, all elegant lines; gracious in victory.

He has won. Even if the Creets have not yet realised it, Samiel knows. He can see it in the corners of Jason's mouth; the way his gaze flicks briefly, derisively, over the rest of the battalion.

 _“Of course,”_ he says.

The image distorts, wobbling and blurring as they make their way back to their separate sides. The bodycam wearer must be a Raxian, because the image follows Jason back across the mud and filth of the clearing.

 _“Will they agree?”_ someone asks, out of sight.

Jason looks at them, and there is something glittering, dangerous in his eyes. _“Oh yes,”_ he says, _“they'll agree.”_

What would it be like, Samiel thinks, to possess him? To have all that cleverness and all that steel and unbearable softness focused on him, and only him. To chase rainwater down the length of Jason's neck; to press soft little bites to the tender skin of his collarbone.

There is darkness here, he can feel it. An uneasy joining of horror at his own desires, and the sickening sense of satisfaction he could have if he knew Jason was his. 

He can hear his master's voice as he continues to talk to the Raxian; can hear the cut glass intonations of his interior circle accent. He wonders, jealously, if anyone has ever found out what it takes to make that beautiful sound crack; to mute it into wordless pleasure. 

He wets his lips, helplessly aroused by the idea.

If he were there he could draw Jason aside, could lead him away into the surrounding jungle, until they were out of sight of both parties. He could pin him against a tree; press kisses into that lying, tender mouth and rut against him. He could listen to the very first sounds of Jason, giving way.

 _What do you want?_ he would ask, and pull far enough away to watch those sea-mist eyes glaze with pleasure at the sound of his voice; no translator between them to deaden the harmonies. _Let me give you anything you desire._

 _I want –_ his master would say, and there, at last, would be the first splinters of pleasure in that beautiful, terrible, deceitful voice. _I want –_

And Samiel would know. He would _know_ , and he would press close again, and catch his master's wicked mouth. He would feel the way Jason responded, giving way piece by piece, until he was leaning in, conceding defeat in a way he would with no one else.

 _Fuck me_ , his master would say, running his fingers through Samiel's curls when they both pause for breath. His grip would catch, pleasurably painful as he demanded attention, obedience. _I want you to fuck me._ His hips would be moving; a slow, unthinking roll as he presses closer; delicious pressure against Samiel's cock, until they are both half mad with the stilted pleasure of it.

Samiel shivers at the thought. Without conscious decision he unbuttons his trousers, pulling them down far enough to grip his cock. He is already hard; swollen and aching with the thought of his human, coming apart beneath his hands.

He can half hear the continuing conversation on the screen – snippets of sentences undercut by his master's precise tones. It blends in his head, melding into the thought of Jason, pressed beneath him, into the dirt of the jungle floor.

 _Slowly_ , his master would say, even as his eyes would flutter closed at the pleasure of Samiel, sliding careful fingers into him. _Slowly, please, Samiel, I can't –_

There, Samiel thinks, palming the length of his own cock. There would be the moment of surrender; of total perfection in the way Jason would let him in, would rock down onto his fingers. That would be the moment his master would lose the thread of his words, when the only thing that mattered would be what Samiel could give to him. He lets out a small moan at the thought of it.

 _Let me in, darling_ , he thinks he would say, and would watch as his master panted, helplessly pleasured and strung out with no more than touch and sound.

 _Please_ , Jason would say, and he should never have to beg. Samiel wouldn't want him to; wouldn't let his heartsong, his beloved, need for anything.

He would sink in, slow and careful. He can almost feel the tight heat of Jason's body; hear the soft sounds of incoherent pleasure he would make. Samiel lets his head drop back, panting at the thought, as he grips his cock tighter. 

Somewhere nearby the recording of Jason is saying: _“I don't think this is the time to start playing games, do you?”_

 _Don't play games_ , the Jason in his head says, sweetly dazed, his cock hard against the lines of Samiel's stomach. _I've told you what to do._

 _Of course_ , Samiel thinks, or says, he can't quite work out which. His fingers slide up and down his shaft, his hips hitching with the desperate need to fuck upwards, to bury himself in Jason. To pin him down and hold him still, until all his master can do is take it, desperate and gasping as Samiel works over him, in him.

He trembles, already on the brink, and rubs a thumb across the leaking head of his cock.

 _Mine_ , Jason would say to him, against his mouth, his heel digging into the small of Samiel's back. And yes, Samiel can almost taste the way that stunned, victorious smile would feel against his lips. _Mine, my clever boy. Did you think it would be the other way around?_

He could be panting, shuddering in mindless pleasure and still winding himself deeper into the depths of Samiel's soul with every syllable he uttered.

 _Master_ , Samiel wants to say into the tender skin of his throat, fucking into him in raw, desperate strokes. _Master, please_. He wants to bite down; to sink teeth into the pale softness of Jason's neck. He wants to taste blood, copper bright on his tongue, and he doesn't know why. All he knows is that even buried balls deep in Jason, he would still not be close enough.

He thinks of hips stuttering, of Jason crying out at the sharp, bright pain of lips and tongue and teeth. He thinks of wetness spreading between them and Jason's punched out, breathy little gasps, his hips still moving, rolling with Samiel's thrusts, even as he's still coming, desperate for more.

 _Please_ , he thinks of Jason saying against his ear, warm and tender and all consuming.

Samiel's fist flies across his cock at the thought, and he's coming, his head flung back, panting out his orgasm to the ceiling. His body is one long line of tension, toes curling as he thinks of fucking down, of filling Jason up and holding him still, of wringing another orgasm out of him as he does.

 _Mine_ , he thinks for one shining, terrible moment of victory, as his come wets his fingers, his robes, and he trembles with the vicious satisfaction of it.

He stills, slowly, his heartbeat thundering in his ears as he stares blindly at the ceiling. His body is throbbing. There is a languorous unwinding of tension seeping through his muscles, his soul, as he floats, half dazed on the idea of what could be.

 _Mine_ , he thinks again, half testing the idea, and feels the rightness of it settling into his bones.

_My master._

_Mine._


	2. A Strange Kind of Army

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so this is a little 5+1 fic that quite literally would not leave my head and has been sitting gently cooking on my computer, until I couldn't control it any more. This was actually meant to be a lot more serious than it turned out, and was meant to look in greater depth at the Siren vs. human culture. That... did not happen, and instead this piece of fluff turned up. You have no idea how hard I tried to write 'Kate' instead of 'Hird', but it didn't work.
> 
> Full credit to the amazing Sukka for the overall prompt, and the amazing [pippawrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pippawrites/pseuds/pippawrites) for asking what Sirens call humans.
> 
> The next chapter of _Icarus_ will be up next weekend, because this consumed my brain and writing time this week.
> 
> So, 'Five Times Hird and Venndred Engaged in Cultural Exchange, and the One Time They Didn't Really Need To': M/F (Venndred/Hird), fluff, cultural differences, bad language, rated T.

_'You tell the story of Thebes, another tells of the war-cries of the Phrygians, I tell how I myself was captured. It was no horse that destroyed me, no infantry, no fleet, but another strange kind of army, striking me with its eyes.'_ _\- Anacreontea, 26_

**1\. Surrender is a Four Letter Word**

Attien is a bloodbath and the ash and smoke that fills the sky has Hird rolling onto her back, choking as she struggles to release her helmet. Her filters are busted and she can't breathe.

Somewhere above her, the rest of her squadron are still battling it out in a dogfight; but she is here on the ground, pinned and useless.

In the distance behind her something explodes, the flames of it licking high into the darkened sky. The heat is so intense she can feel it on her parched lips, as her helmet finally pulls free.

She sucks in deep, greedy lungfuls of airs, then promptly chokes again on the smoke and the smell of blood. She rolls onto her side – ignoring the protests of her body – and coughs again. Her shoulders are screaming from the safety harness, and her left hip is numb where she landed badly. She tries to move her legs, to get her feet under her, and can't hold back a scream at the white hot pulse of pain that shoots through her bones.

“Shit, shit, fucking shit.”

She breathes, breathes again, and awkwardly scrabbles one-handed for her pistol, praying it is still strapped to her hip.

It is.

She pulls it loose and, with considerable effort, shifts again until she is laying on her front.

It is one of the first things she was taught in Basic: when incapacitated stay low, stay quiet. Don't let Them find you. Keep an eye on your surroundings and stay calm.

Somewhere to her left someone is whimpering. It is a long, almost inaudible drone of pain that sets her teeth on edge. She wants to tell them to fucking keep it down – to keep quiet because it's going to bring Them down faster than a plague of varleks on carrion.

Overhead two strike ships scream through the sky and she watches, squinting against the sudden downdraft that kicks up dust and more ash from the planet's surface. The two ships veer off wildly, heading towards the horizon and Hird tracks them as they go.

_How the fuck did this happen?_ she wonders. _And how the fuck am I going to get to an evac point?_

The sounds of ground fighting are dim and distant – if nothing else she has at least crashed away from the main point of conflict. Whether she has crashed on the right side, however, is another thing altogether.

Cautiously she draws her arm up, moving slowly to avoid detection, and taps her commlink, praying it hasn't been damaged in the crash.

The screen flickers to life and she breathes a sigh of relief, right up until she realises she hasn't crashed away from the fighting at all.

She's crashed in the middle of no man's land.

She really wants to swear.

She can't. Now more than ever, she can't.

The person – creature? - droning in pain nearby suddenly stops, abruptly and completely. The clean cut of the silence in the moments that follow raise the hairs on the back of Hird's neck, and she presses herself further into the dirt, making her breathing as shallow as she can. She knows she needs to close her eyes – to play dead and hope that if one of Them is nearby it will overlook her. But she can't, God she can't.

If she is going to die she will stare death in the fucking face.

There is the soft crunch of boots over ash and rubble, and in the periphery of her vision she sees the slow drag of a black hem sweeping the ground.

They've found her.

“ _Irian karlash kreos_ ,” the Thing says, it's voice distorted and – and – 

Oh fucking hell, her translator isn't working. It isn't fucking working. She's going to be turned into a fucking drone, she's seen it before and she can't – she can't – 

Death first, then.

“ _Irian karlash kreos_ ,” the Thing repeats, sounding impatient. 

Hird closes her eyes for one brief second and her grip tightens on her gun, her finger barely grazing the trigger. She will have one chance at this, and one chance only.

Death. First.

She rolls over fast – or as fast as she can with her pain and the soft slide of the ground beneath her. She brings her pistol up to bear and squeezes the trigger once, twice, in a burst of rapid fire.

The creature had almost been standing on top of her, and the last thing she sees before the roar of pain wavers her vision to black lines of agony, is the startled expression on its face, made young with surprise and terror, as it stumbles back with the impact of her shots.

“Fuck off,” she snarls.

She passes out.

 

**2\. Formal Dress Code Required**

They have been on Lenia for two weeks, and the miserable planet is making Hird itch, her skin crawling with the insincerity of it all.

So far there have been polite overtures – gentle murmurings of peace and compliance – and she doesn't trust any of them. How can you, when you have seen what they can do? When you have stood on the bridge of your ship and watched planets burn beneath your feet, because you were too late to save anyone from Siren malice?

And then there's this false serenity, here in Maa-Tarek; this placid pretence of diplomacy that is all lies. 

Lault is going along with it, and Lane...

Lane is a can of worms Hird is not going to open if she can help it. The man is damaged, serene in the face of danger and wide-eyed and terrified at the thought of nothing to fight against, even if he can't see it himself. Were he anyone else, Hird would already be putting in a request to have him transferred to the _Banshee_. He's got a brilliant mind – she's seen bits of it – but he comes with so much fucking baggage he needs his own transport carrier.

Particularly when it comes to that absolute fucking creepy nightmare of a drone, Tremark.

_Jesus_ , Hird thinks, rubbing her forehead and trying to ignore the tightness in her shoulders. _I do not want to be there when those two fucking sort themselves out for better or worse. The whole fucking galaxy is going to burn down if they're not fucking careful_.

The whole thing is a disaster just waiting to happen, and when coupled with a melting pot of false diplomacy from a race of creatures who quite desperately want to kill them...

Hird really wants to hit something.

Because she can – and because there is nothing better to do this afternoon – she returns to the _Banshee_. She strips to her sports bra and a pair of loose, light trousers, and starts hitting the training dummies as hard as she can.

The rest of the crew avoid her; they know better than to disturb her when she's like this. But the clean silence of physical violence makes her relax, slowly, as she fights an enemy only she can see, until her knuckles sting. It is straightforward: uncomplicated in a way everything else is not, and it makes her soul sing.

Here she has something to rage against. Sweat drips into her eyes and plasters her hair to the back of her neck. Her arms ache as she punches again, and again. The physicality of it centres her, even if her teeth still hurt from grinding them together, where she has to swallow down everything she is not allowed to fucking say.

“Boss,” Con says, somewhere around the hour mark, and his voice jolts Hird out of her rhythm.

She lurches a little, then steadies the swinging training dummy with one hand as she looks at him. “What?” she snaps, then softens her expression as she sees him raise an eyebrow. “Sorry,” she tries again. “What is it?”

Con shrugs. “There's a pretty boy here to see you. Says he wants to say hello or something. Want me to tell him to fuck off?”

A pretty boy. That could be literally anyone. Con's use of that descriptor ranges from Subtle, all the way through to Lane, and is not always meant to be complimentary. In Con's language, what it actually means is soft.

_Soft._

Hird bets she knows who is standing on her proverbial fucking doorstep.

“Let me guess,” she says, wiping sweat from her brow and stooping to pick up her water bottle. “Tall, dark hair, odd features, half stork, half Siren? Looks like he's about thirty seconds from breaking out the puppy eyes at any given time?”

“Yep,” Con says. “Still want me to tell him to fuck off?”

Hird considers this. It is so, so tempting. The _Banshee_ is meant to be her retreat, her little bit of safety from all the batshit crazy going around. But it could be something important.

She sighs.

“Escort him in,” she says. “Bring him to me, and don't let him go anywhere fucking else on here.”

Con drops her a sloppy salute and disappears.

As she waits, she tidies the training room up a bit, aware of the three half-wrecked dummies propped in one corner, which have not been lucky enough to survive her frustration. Martell will fix them, she always does, but Hird is not keen to broadcast her feelings to a Siren, even if it is only the idiot priest.

When Liesen arrives, trailing Con who disappears again without a word, the first thing he does is study the room.

“Oh!” he says, boyish features lighting up with pleasure. “I didn't think they had training rooms on human vessels!”

Hird studies him, silently.

There is something naggingly familiar about Venndred Liesen. The set of his face reminds her of something, and it has from the moment she clapped eyes on him. Frustratingly, the pinprick of recognition will not disappear, but she can't quite recall why. His features are not as smooth and classically handsome as most of his species. His jaw and his chin are slightly too big, his ears a little too large and he is all awkward limbs and angles; erratic movements, where creatures like Tremark are coiled predators.

He is... different. Unusual.

“It's fascinating really –” Liesen begins, turning to her. Then he chokes. “What?” he says, going bright red from the tips of his ridiculous ears, to the hollow of his throat. “What are you wearing?”

Hird glances down, in case she's accidentally torn her top and not noticed. “Clothes,” she says, and watches Liesen flounder hopelessly for a moment. 

A wicked part of her quite enjoys the way he wears his emotions so openly, and particularly enjoys flustering him.

“Only sort of,” Liesen says, strangled. “Evi, you don't seriously expect me to believe you wear things like this when you – you – exercise?”

“Yes,” Hird says, and watches his mouth work soundlessly for a moment, like a stranded fish.

“But it's practically indecent!” Liesen says at last. “You're – there's nothing – _I can see everything_.” He flails a little.

“No you can't,” Hird says. Deciding not to dignify his hysteria with a proper response, she turns to push the last training dummy back towards the cupboard. As she bends over to slide the last bolt home on the cupboard door, Liesen lets out a sad little croak, as though someone has stepped on him.

“Listen,” he says a little desperately, as Hird turns to look at him again. “I would really suggest not showing so much of...” he gestures vaguely, “...so much,” he finishes. “We're not used to...to...”

“Skin?” Hird suggests acidly.

“Yes!” Liesen shouts. Then: “Wait, no! Just... in public. In private, it's different of course.” As though to emphasise his point, he waves an arm, demonstrating the sweep of his robes.

“I am in private,” Hird says, “and you intruded.”

“You're in a public training room,” Lisesen says. “That is really not private!”

There is something intensely fascinating about the way his face is still very red, and the quite loud, and quite wicked, part of Hird wants to tease him – to see if he can get any redder. She wants to shock his sensibilities even further, and resists the almost childish urge to crowd forward, just to watch how fast he will run away.

“Oh stop it,” she says instead. “This is common enough amongst humans, you must know that.”

Liesen opens his mouth. Closes it again. He quite visibly weighs his next words, even as his gaze flits helplessly between somewhere over Hird's shoulder and the floor.

“I didn't expect to actually see anything like this,” he says at last. “I know there are differences between our two species, and that includes standard of dress. But, really...” He trails off, and this time he does look at her. “I'm feeling a bit ambushed.”

“Only because you lot are apparently horrific prudes,” Hird says sweetly, just to see what he does. “Do you all spend your time dressed from top to toe, swanning around in five different layers of fabric?” She bares her teeth and enjoys the way he flinches. “That seems particularly stupid, if you ask me.”

“We are _private_ ,” Liesen says. “We do things _privately_ , and baring your skin is not something you do lightly.”

“Not even when you get hot?”

The look he shoots her at that is blank. “I don't think we run as warm as humans,” he says. “Or maybe we do and we're just better at coping with the heat. I don't know.”

“You are all so repressed,” Hird says, to wind him up further. “Don't you even have fucking, I don't know, communal showers or something?”

“No!” Liesen says, horrified. “Why would we do that?”

“Saves time, money and water,” Hird points out.

Liesen shudders. “I can't think of anything – that's completely – no. Just. No.”

“Oh dear,” Hird says, and makes sure to show all her teeth as she grins at him again. He flinches a little. “What a waste of a good time.”

“Please stop,” Liesen begs. “This conversation is really not what I came here for. I wasn't prepared for...this.” He gestures at all of her.

“This?” Hird says, and feels a burn of pleasure, as the flush that had started to fade from his cheeks returns in full force.

“You have really rather wonderful biceps,” Liesen says helplessly, then promptly looks as though he has swallowed a brick.

“Do I?” Hird says, and now she really is enjoying herself. “Well, come a little closer. I can use them to break your fucking neck.”

“I really didn't mean to say that.”

“I'm sure you didn't, Psyke. Isn't there some rule against priests lusting after anyone?”

“Lust!” Liesen splutters. “I'm not _lusting_ , this is not _lust_.” He throws his hands up in the air, and Hird is pretty sure he's about to spontaneously combust with embarrassment. “This is – I came here to – ” 

“To?”

“Wing Commander Lane has gone missing,” Liesen shouts, and the look of desperation on his face would be almost comical, if Hird's heart hadn't dropped like a stone at his words.

“ _What?_ ” she roars. “And you couldn't have _started_ with that?”

“You were distracting! It was all – with the muscles and the – the – look. Just. Please put some clothes on!”

“I am going to wring your scrawny neck,” Hird says as she dives for her kit bag. “I am going to throw you off the nearest fucking roof I can find, because you can't prioritise and you're too busy fucking leering – ” 

“Hey!”

“Shut up.” She throws a sweatshirt on, ignoring the way it sticks uncomfortably to her skin, and pretends not to hear the audible sigh of relief from Liesen. 

“Give me anything you've got on what's happened to him,” she says, grabbing Liesen by the arm as she strides from the room. 

“Of course,” he says, and she does not fail to notice the way he lets himself be towed in her wake.

 

**3\. The Language of Love**

The hospital bed is pretty much like every single other one Hird has ended up in, during the highlights of her career.

As she slowly crawls her way back towards consciousness, the stiffness of the sheets, the rock hard mattress, and the strong smell of e-gel are all sharply familiar to her in a world of unfamiliarity. The steady hum of monitors, and the bone deep ache of a body put back together, reminds her of a time not very long before Lenia, when she and Steve had very nearly been ripped to pieces and ended up being pieced back together, one stitch at a time.

The sound of soft breathing next to her, that's new though.

Hird keeps her own breathing steady and her eyes closed. It could be Lane next to her, she's not sure. 

But it might not be.

She remembers the accident with the flightbikes – remembers the all-consuming pain as she hit the ground – and she thinks she remembers Lane talking to her later, here.

But she doesn't remember much else.

“Is she awake?” a cool voice asks to her left, and she hears a soft, negative hum.

“No,” Venndred says, and Hird feels a small piece of the tension she has been carrying with her loosen a little bit. He survived. Thank fuck for that.

“She sustained significant injuries,” the first voice says. “And we were slightly unclear on how much sedative she required – she seems to burn through it faster than we calculated for. She may wake up fairly soon.” 

There is a slight hesitation, then the voice continues: “Forgive me Psyke, but perhaps we should continue to sedate her. It may be for the best until we establish what actually happened.”

“Absolutely not,” Venndred says, and Hird can't help the little reflexive twitch of her fingers at the edge to his voice. “This woman saved my life. She saved Wing Commander Lane's life and she saved Severne Tremark's life. And you want to keep her sedated because she may have – what? Had a hand in this somehow?”

“I'm not saying she did,” the voice soothes. “But you have to consider that a ground crawler may – ” 

“Get out,” Venndred says, and his voice is very soft and astonishingly dangerous for someone who is such an idiot. “Get out, and don't you dare even think of coming back into this room. You find me a clinician who isn't blinded by prejudice and can treat their patient properly.” 

“But Psyke – ” 

There is a long, very explicit pause. Hird struggles to keep her eyes closed against the almost overwhelming desire to see what is going on.

“Of course,” the physician says at last, stiffly. “As you wish.”

The sound of his footsteps fade from the room, and Hird releases a slow, careful breath. Next to her, almost in tandem, Venndred sighs as well.

The cool touch of his fingers against her own makes Hird startle a little, in spite of herself, and she opens her eyes to look at Venndred.

He is watching her, amusement painted across his face. His gold eyes are bright under the fall of his ridiculous hair, which is flopping across his forehead. Some strange emotion in Hird's chest does a funny little jump at the fondness she can see, as he smiles at her. She quietly files the feeling away to be examined sometime in the distant never.

“How long were you awake?” Venndred asks, somewhat resigned, and doesn't move his hand away from holding hers.

“Somewhere around 'ground crawler', I think,” Hird says. Her voice is hoarse, her throat dry, and Venndred's expression darkens slightly, even as he leans across to pour her a glass of water.

“I'm sorry you had to hear that,” he says quietly, and holds the glass to her mouth so she can drink through the straw. 

“It's not that bad,” Hird says when she's finished drinking. Ridiculously, she almost wants to comfort the idiot. “I've been called much worse.”

“I don't think you have,” Venndred says.

“There wasn't even any swearing,” Hird says. “I'm almost disappointed in the lack of creativity.”

“Ground crawler _is_ swearing,” Venndred says, puzzled. “It's one of the very worst things you can call, well, someone like you.”

“A human?”

“A human.”

Hird blinks, then blinks again. Her brain is not firing on all cylinders and she can feel a slow burn starting up in her arms, where the sedative is wearing off. But she's interested in spite of herself, even if the thread of the conversation is not what she had anticipated.

“Why?” she asks.

Venndred sighs. “Humans are... not as advanced as a lot of the other species we come into contact with,” he says.

“Well obviously,” Hird says. “I know we're latecomers to the party, but what – ” 

Venndred shushes her, pressing a finger to her lips. “I'm trying to explain,” he says.

Hird thinks very carefully, and very explicitly, about biting the finger off. From the way the corners of Venndred's eyes crease in amusement, he quite clearly recognises her train of thought, even as he removes the offending digit and uses it to tap the end of her nose instead.

“Patience, Evi,” he says.

“I will end you,” Hird says, although she doesn't really mean it. “Come over here so I can strangle you with my bare hands.”

“You can't move your arms right now,” Venndred says. “They're splinted.”

“I have legs. I can strangle you with my thighs.”

“Well, what a way to go,” Venndred says, then blushes.

They stare at one another for a long moment.

“I can't believe you said that,” Hird says. “I actually can't believe you _fucking said that_.”

“Anyway,” Venndred says, hurrying on and looking flustered, even as he doesn't let go of her hand, “ground crawler is a specific term for humans, because you're not advanced. Stunted. You're still crawling from the primordial ooze of the universe.”

“Don't try and change the subject,” Hird says. “For fuck's sake, do you think I'm an idiot? That was rhetorical,” she adds, narrowing her eyes as Venndred opens his mouth to reply. “I am not going to be distracted by an explanation on how insulting it is to call humans a lesser species. I want to know what that comment about my thighs meant.”

“You brought up your thighs,” Venndred protests. “I hadn't said anything about them.”

“You just said you wanted to be suffocated between my thighs,” Hird says, “and then went on to tell me I'm still evolving from swamp life.” She scowls at him. “For a man who apparently wants to go down on me, you're sending rather mixed messages.”

“Oh,” Venndred says, then looks even more embarrassed. “Oh, dear. I didn't actually mean the comment about the thighs like...like that.” He winces as Hird raises an eyebrow. “I just meant you've got a lovely pair of...you're just really rather...” He trails off and stares at her. “Evi, please tell me what to say here, because I really cannot think of anything that isn't going to end in you committing physical violence.”

Hird relents, and if she feels sorry for him it is only because she is still hopped up on painkillers, and doesn't have the energy to actually wind him up further at this point.

“Tell me more about the primordial ooze thing,” she says, instead of any one of the number of very rude and slightly explicit things she would like to threaten him with.

“Right. Right! So, primordial ooze,” Venndred says, and clears his throat. “It means you're not evolved, a lesser species. There are some people who...consider humans that.” He sighs and squeezes her hand. “Because we can influence you, and there are only some species we can do that with, and most of them are not like you lot.”

“Ah,” Hird says. “We're like dogs, you can tell us what to do.” She smiles, a little unkindly.

“You're really not,” Venndred protests. “It's just, unfortunately, when we tell you what to do, you _listen_.” He sighs. “So, ground crawler is a rather nasty way of saying 'lesser'. A sub-species.”

Hird considers this. “That's more than a little patronising,” she says at last.

“Yes.”

“And absolutely smacks of a superiority complex a mile wide.”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” Hird says. “Yeah, actually, I can definitely see now how that is really not a pleasant thing to say. Particularly given how far up your own arses you all are about things like status and power.”

“Not all of us,” Venndred says.

Hird favours him with a Look. “Most of you,” she says. “Don't tell me you didn't think something at least a little bit fucking condescending when you met me for the first time.”

“Actually,” Venndred says without hesitation, “my first thought was 'Tisiphene'.”

“Bless you,” Hird says, because even though she can't get out of bed, she's not above being an arsehole when it counts.

Venndred favours her with a look of his own. “Don't be antagonistic,” he chides gently.

“Well what does it mean then?” Hird says snidely. “Worm? Adorable pet? Hopeless barbarian?”

“We have stories,” Venndred says, “the same as you. Tisiphene is the warrior goddess, who battles the god of the sun, Ellios, each day to save her husband, Lenias, god of the moon.” He must see the expression on Hird's face, because he ducks his head, shyly. “She's fierce, undefeated even as she loses each day, and wins each night. No loss ever stops her climbing to her feet and trying again, time after time.”

“For fuck's sake,” Hird says, and if her grip on his hand is slightly tighter than it should be, she's not going to admit it. “I'm trying to be rude here and you come out with that.”

“Yes,” Venndred says, and rubs the back of his neck with his free hand. He looks awkward. “Well. If you weren't trying to pick a fight, Evi, I'd think something was wrong.”

“Oh my God,” Hird mutters, almost to herself. “You really are just fucking nice, aren't you?”

Venndred laughs a little, glancing up at her from beneath his lashes.

“Definitely not,” he says.

 

**4\. Weaponised Affection**

Because she has been effectively tied to a hospital bed, and then forcibly moved by Tremark back to the Governor's house, Hird is not in a particularly good mood.

She can feel herself brightening up a little though, when Lane comes back from his investigations. And she's even happier when she hears Steve's voice updating her on Lault and the ongoing situation.

Steve is...

Well.

She's fully prepared to rip to pieces anyone who touches her crew, but Steve, more than most, she will defend with teeth and nails and bare hands if she has to. Of all the damaged, conflicted people she collects – and she's quite happy to admit that she counts herself amongst their number – it is Steve who has earned that right to total loyalty.

“Evi,” Venndred says thoughtfully, from where he is flat out on the bed, his head hanging over the edge as he observes her from upside down, “why are you grinning?”

Hird shrugs. “Team update,” she says. “It's always useful to know how everyone's doing whilst we're on this nightmare of a planet.”

“It's not so bad,” Venndred says comfortably. “You don't hate it nearly as much as you pretend to.”

Hird raises an eyebrow. “Don't I?”

“No.”

Because she can – and because Lane is not around to clutch his proverbial pearls in horror, and Tremark isn't there to try and stab her – Hird points a finger at the idiot priest. “That's a filthy lie,” she says, “and if I was able to use my arms properly I'd string you up by your ankles as a warning to others.”

“Yes dear,” Venndred says placidly, then blinks. “Why are you getting out your gun? I thought you weren't allowed to fire it?”

“That doesn't mean I can't do maintenance on it,” Hird says, and she can't help the reprove in her voice as she starts to dismantle her HL50. “Don't tell me they didn't teach you proper weaponry care when you were a solider, pretty boy.”

Venndred shrugs – and how he manages that hanging upside down, Hird has no idea. “Mostly they went back to storage after use and they sorted them out there,” he says.

“What about when you were out in the field?”

“Field assistants.”

“Oh my God,” Hird says, absolutely delighted at this discovery. “You're all fucking useless, is that what you're telling me? You can't even maintain your own equipment; you have to get someone else to do it for you?”

“Apparently,” Venndred says easily.

“Right,” Hird says, because she can't help herself, “that's ridiculous. Get your arse over here, Liesen. I'm going to teach you how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble this gun.”

“No,” Venndred groans, closing his eyes. “Why? I don't handle weapons any more.”

“Except when you need to,” Hird says. “And you never know when that might be. So: Arse. Here. Now.” She pats the floor, and grins at the little grumble of discontent he makes as he rolls over and slides slowly off the bed to flop down next to her.

“This is a waste of a perfectly good afternoon,” he tells her, one pointy elbow jammed awkwardly into her side, from where he is slumped against her.

“It's educational,” Hird says. “We can write this up as a fucking, I don't know, cultural exchange or something, when we get back to Maa-whatsit.”

“Maa-Tarek,” Venndred says, “which you absolutely know. You're just trying to annoy me.”

“Am I?”

“ _Yes_.”

Hird shrugs and doesn't deny it. He's not wrong, after all, and he's the only entertainment she's got left until the fucking awful formal dinner the Governor's arranged. Lane is off...somewhere. Sitting in a corner and trying to avoid that creep Tremark, probably, and she's got no one else to talk to. There's Littien, she supposes, but she's not quite sure if the Severne will kill her if she opens her mouth right now.

“Stock,” she says instead of anything else. “Barrel, grip, trigger, cartridge.” As she lists, she slowly starts to take the HL50 apart. “Watch out for the trigger, it always sticks on these,” she adds, fingers gently pulling as Venndred watches her.

“Why this particular gun?” he asks.

Hird shrugs again. “Why not?” she says. “It's a good model.”

“You just said the trigger sticks. That doesn't sound good to me.”

“Well, when it works it's good.” She sighs. “Are you paying attention, or are you going to make me do it again?”

Venndred holds up both hands. “I'm paying attention, blood's oath.”

“Blood's oath,” Hird mimics under her breath. “Honestly, who fucking speaks like that?”

“I do,” Venndred says, bumping shoulders companionably with her. “As you well know.”

“Fine.” Delicately she starts to reassemble everything. “You can have a go in a minute.”

“I don't want a go,” Venndred says, “but thank you for the offer.”

“Well what was the point in showing you?”

Venndred draws his – ridiculously lanky, Hird thinks sourly – legs up, resting one arm across his knees as he does. “It calmed you down a bit,” he says, watching her. “You've been in a bad mood most of the afternoon, and I was honestly a little concerned earlier you would genuinely have tried to shoot someone.”

“If I wanted a therapist,” Hird says, instead of admitting he is right, “I would fucking get one. And it would not be you.” 

Venndred beams at her, shamelessly. “And I learnt something new today about humans and their guns,” he adds, and if his tone is a touch too virtuous, Hird is going to be the better person and ignore it. “After all, I've never had to do weapons maintenance, and now I know.”

“You know what else I can do with a gun?” Hird asks him, because actually she never can be the better person. “I can shove it up your fucking arse.”

“Well,” says Venndred, “I think that might be a little too much cultural exchange to put in a report to Maa-Tarek.”

Hird grins.

 

**5\. Sleep is for the Weak**

It has been seven hours and twenty four minutes since Lane disappeared.

Hird has already stripped out of her dress uniform, because she can't stand the tight collar strangling her any further. In a fit of fury around hour five, she had thrown the bloody jacket across the room.

It hadn't made her feel any better.

She is sitting in one of the formal gardens now, her back against a tree as she tries not to scream her rage and frustration to the universe.

There has been absolutely no news. No footage has been found, no suspects hanging around in places they shouldn't be. All that's been left is Helenia Mirret, sprawled on the marble, her blood pooled around her head like some kind of dreadful halo.

And no. Fucking. Lane.

This is her fault, Hird thinks. She rests her head in her hands and tries to breathe deeply. All her fucking fault. There is no excuse. She'd relied on that fucking idiot Tremark to actually do his fucking job, and now they're all fucking fucked, because the most controversial human fucking ambassador has fucking well disappeared.

She should have known better than to leave security to someone else.

Entirely her fault.

“It's not your fault,” Venndred says as though he can read minds, as he sits down next to her.

Hird stiffens and doesn't raise her head, because if she does she's going to lash out at him and right now he doesn't deserve her at her worst. “Yes it is,” she grates out from between clenched teeth, and hopes he'll get the message to go the fuck away.

“It's not,” he says gently.

For one absurd moment, Hird can imagine the rest of the conversation going round in circles like this, and half of her wants to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it, and the other half wants to punch something.

And she can't even fucking do that, because of her arms.

“Who else is responsible for his security?” she says instead. “No one. So ask yourself, if I'm the only one responsible for his security, and he's fucking vanished, who is to blame?”

“Whoever did this,” Venndred says.

Hird really does lift her head then to glare at him; she can't help herself. “No,” she hisses. “It's my fault, and all the nice words in the world aren't going to change that right now, priest.”

Venndred sighs. “Evi...”

“No. _No_. I should have known better.” Hird slams a fist into the ground and bites her tongue, as pain jars up her not-quite-healed arm. “And I was too busy, what? Making nice with fucking Sirens? Playing at being a diplomat? Well, I'm not a fucking diplomat and I should have done my job.”

Absently Venndred reaches out, taking her injured hand and cradling it between both of his. She lets him, because she is not used to this kind of tenderness, and he has caught her by surprise. He runs a thumb over her knuckles, which are already starting to bruise, and frowns at the smears of blood and dirt.

“Have you considered,” he says, “that Lane might have made his own choices here? He has got previous when it comes to wandering off.”

“And he just, what, left the Governor's wife dead on the floor?” Hird says scornfully, before she can stop herself. “Don't be stupid. Surely Lane would have at least realised how that was going to look.”

Venndred hums thoughtfully. “I think you might be giving Wing Commander Lane too much credit,” he says. “I think he is a very clever man with some spectacularly dangerous blind spots.”

“Fucking Tremark,” Hird mutters darkly, and doesn't take her hand back.

“Amongst others, yes.”

She sighs, and leans back against the tree. “It doesn't change it,” she says. “I'm going to have to go back and report to my superiors that I managed to lose the one person in this whole sodding enterprise with the capacity to completely fuck up the peace talks if he winds up dead somewhere.”

“Well,” Venndred says, “maybe we can find him first?”

“How?” Hird asks. “You have some magic wand up your sleeve that's going to miraculously bring him back? Because as far as I'm aware, your lot have already investigated what's happened, and they have no fucking clue.”

“I think,” Venndred says, not rising to the bait, “we both need sleep.”

“Oh yes,” Hird says, bitterly. “Sleep, that's really going to solve everything.”

“No, but it's going to mean we can both think straight.” Venndred glances up at the sky, where the first signs of a pre-dawn light are beginning to creep across the horizon. “And then we can start again later today.”

Hird stares at him. “I don't think you fucking understand,” she says. “I can't fucking sleep, I need to find him.”

“And we will,” Venndred says. There is something quietly confident in the way he looks at her. He smiles, a little, and bumps their shoulders together. “But right now, neither of us can do any more. Can you tell me honestly that you've done anything productive in the last two hours?”

Hird is almost ready to spit out something vulgar and unspeakably rude, but she doesn't. She swallows what she wants to say and locks it down tightly, because he's right, and she knows it, even if she doesn't want to admit it.

“Fine,” she says. “Four hours, and then I'm going hunting, with or without you.”

“With,” Venndred says. “Definitely with, Evi.” He turns her hand palm up, tracing the length of her lifeline with one careful finger. “Now come on, let's get back to the rooms.”

“No,” Hird says, because here at least she can draw the limit. “I can't sleep in there, it's like a fucking box.”

“Oh,” Venndred says, as though something has just started to make sense. “Is that why you never sleep inside if you can help it?”

Hird stares at him. “Excuse me?”

“Well, I noticed that even in Maa-Tarek, you weren't sleeping in your room that often. I thought it was just something humans...did. Sleep outside, I mean.”

Hird stares at him. “You're an idiot,” she says, not unkindly. “Astonishingly, most normal humans prefer sleeping in beds to up trees.”

“But not you.”

“Not always.”

Venndred considers this for a while. “But it's so uncomfortable,” he says at last. “Why would you?”

“Fresh air, good lines of sight, security, surprise ambush if necessary,” Hird lists. “Why wouldn't you want to?”

“Because it's not pleasant?”

“Maybe,” Hird allows. “But it is secure.”

They both fall quiet for a while. Hird slumps tiredly, not letting her eyes drift shut as she would very much like to. Venndred seems to be lost in his own thoughts, and she's not going to disturb him by suggesting he go inside.

The hum of anger is still settled just below her skin. But she feels a little less like going out and burning the world down now, and a little more like she desperately needs to gather herself together again before the next problem rears its ugly head.

“Good lines of sight,” Venndred says under his breath, startling her out of her daze. He chuckles, quietly. “Well, you're not wrong.”

“I'm never wrong,” Hird says. She sighs. “Now if you won't let me climb a tree, at least let me sleep.”

To her surprise he settles in more comfortably, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles.

“Alright,” he says. “Sleep.” He smiles, gently. “And when we wake up, we'll sort this mess out.”

“Don't make promises you can't keep,” Hird mumbles, and lets herself relax against him, just slightly.

“I never do.”

 

**+1. The Fundamental Things Apply**

“You're an idiot,” Hird says, her arms folded as she stares at the data chip Venndred is waving at her. “An absolute fucking idiot. You could have caused another interplanetary incident by threatening the Governor's head of security.”

“But I didn't,” Venndred says, beaming. He waves the data chip at her again. “And look! Footage!”

“Idiot,” Hird says again, and closes her fingers around the data chip. She hesitates. “Thank you,” she says at last, voice slightly hoarse. “If you hadn't stepped in...”

Venndred softens. He still looks pleased with himself, but there is something slightly new and a little bit tender in the way he is looking at her, and Hird is not at all sure what to make of it.

“It was my absolute pleasure,” he says. “Besides, it was really rather fun. I can see why you enjoy threatening people on a regular basis.”

“I do not threaten,” Hird says, pocketing the chip. “I never threaten, I promise. It's different.”

“Well,” Venndred says comfortably, “you haven't made good on any of your _promises_ towards me, so far.”

“You don't deserve them,” Hird says, grudgingly. “I would even go so far as to say you have shot up in my estimation.” 

They both fall into step as they head back towards the waiting shuttle; Venndred swinging his arms a little, and Hird trying not to look too pleased about the whole thing.

“When he thought I was going to call the Queen...” Venndred says suddenly, and a little hiccup of amusement escapes him.

Hird grins, fiercely. “That was a stroke of genius,” she says. “I thought he was either going to piss himself, or pass out.” She laughs outright at Venndred's visible preening at the compliment. 

“Alright,” she says, “don't let it go to your head. Just because I could have bloody kissed you when you stepped in...”

“Kiss?” Venndred stops, blinking at her. “What's a kiss?”

Hird stops too, by the open door to the shuttle. She ignores Littien who is lurking just inside, blatantly eavesdropping. “Are you taking the piss?” she asks suspiciously. “I am fairly fucking confident you know what a kiss is.”

Venndred stuffs his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “Nope,” he says, and gives a little shrug. “Some kind of human ritual thing, yes?”

“Ok.” Hird points an accusatory finger at him. “Now I definitely know you're having me on.” There is a tight little bubble of pleasure lodged under her breastbone, as she watches the way Venndred stands in the sunlight, looking incredibly pleased with himself.

“Never heard of it,” he says. 

“You're a terrible liar,” Hird informs him, and watches the way he wilts, just slightly. The tight feeling in her chest hasn't dissipated, and she almost reaches up to press a hand to her breastbone, to check her stupid heart is functioning properly.

“Perhaps in the interests of cultural exchange, you should demonstrate what a kiss is?” Venndred persists.

Hird grins at the dismayed noise Littien lets out from just inside the shuttle door. Serves her fucking right for listening.

“Well,” she says. “You were rather helpful, so for once in my life, I suppose I could be kind and demonstrate what I mean.”

“ _Karriak kahle ouria_ ,” Littien groans, and there is the sound of her boots, stomping off towards the cockpit.

“Evi,” Venndred says, hands still in his pockets as he ignores the sound of the cockpit door slamming, “I think that would be most gracious of you.”

Hird gives a little shrug and takes two large strides towards him. She leans over – and notes that she has to stretch up, just a little – and plants a firm kiss on his cheek. The softness of his skin, the faint rasp of stubble, surprise her slightly. She steps back hurriedly, clearing her throat.

“There,” she says. “That's a kiss. Satisfied now?”

“Oh,” Venndred says, and blinks at her. “Well, that is very interesting.” He slides his hands out of his pockets, and, Hird realises with dawning horror, he is still looking extremely pleased with himself.

“We have a slightly similar custom, but it goes a little differently.” He bows, almost old fashioned in his courtesy, and smiles at her. “May I demonstrate?”

“What difference – ” Hird begins, and Venndred kisses her.

His lips are soft and warm. When he presses closer it feels a little like she's coming home, although she doesn't know why. She pushes the thought aside; steps into the line of his body, and lets herself be kissed. Her grip tightens on his arms, and in spite of herself she shuts her eyes and then kisses back, carefully. His mouth is hot, and pleasurably sweet, and she can't help the soft little hum of appreciation she lets slip, even as she can fucking _feel_ Venndred smiling at it.

_Really_ , Hird thinks, as the world falls away just slightly, and she feels his hands settle lightly on her hips, _there's not that much of a fucking cultural difference_.


	3. take me as i am (take my life)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this came about because after the last chapter of [Icarus, Burning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17474366?view_full_work=true), the fantastic [deernymph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deernymph/pseuds/deernymph) commented about soul bonds and said: _...it could be such a Soft and nice thing and it just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling..._ , and kindly gave me permission to use the prompt. I'm sorry, this is not quite the fluff I had anticipated (I promise I'll come back and do that properly!), but it did get me to play around with Samiel's POV on this. So, full credit goes to deernymph! (And the title came from Bryan Adams' 'Everything I do (I do It For You), because I have not yet met a pairing I can't slap that song onto.)
> 
> Warnings: Samiel's POV on the shuttle back to Maa-Tarek. Slightly unhealthy coping mechanisms. Possessive thoughts/behaviours.

_Humans_ , his aunt had said once, _cannot be trusted._

She had been sitting with Samiel, on one of the rare days she visited. He was older then, more capable, and she had been spending longer with him each time she came. He remembers quite clearly the rug he had been sitting on, and the way the firelight played off the gold threads of her dress as she looked down at him. She had been perched, straight-backed, in a chair.

_Why?_ he remembers asking. 

_They are thieves, and liars and murderers, Samiel_ , she had said quietly. _They are greedy parasites who will take and take and take. They see nothing wrong with their aggressive expansion. They have no recognition that their actions affect anyone other than themselves._ Her eyes had been dark; sad. _They hate us just for who we are, because they are weak-minded enough to obey our songs._

_Why do we sing to them, then?_ he had asked.

_Because it is our nature_ , his aunt had said. _Because we must. But what is beautiful to us is anathema to them. Never forget, Samiel: if a human sides with you, it is not because they trust you. It is because they want something, even if it is just to hear your voice again._

She had told him, then, about his mother. Her voice had been steady. She had been calm, but he could hear the undercurrent of anger as she spoke. She was disappointed with her sister: at her actions; at the way she had placed a human above her own people. She regretted that her sister had not recognised the consequences of the choices she had made.

Samiel had learnt the lesson well. He began to understand, that day, the absolute failure in putting his own selfish weaknesses above the good of his planet, his people. 

He would not be like his mother, he had vowed, watching his aunt speak with painful care about the fallout of her sister's behaviour. He would not place himself and his needs above anything that was required of him to safeguard Lenia and its Queen.

Now, watching Jason, he is painfully aware that he has failed in his oath.

His aunt will try to understand, he thinks. She will try to forgive. She will do as she always has, and place one strong, graceful hand on his shoulder. 

_You tried_ , she will say. _You may at least say that you have tried, Samiel._ She will attempt to hide her feelings about the way Samiel has let her down, and it will be obvious anyway.

He does not want to disappoint her. He hates that he already has. He despairs that he has already failed her so many times before and now, ultimately, that he has done so in the worst possible way: exactly the same as her sister.

His aunt, he thinks, does not deserve this.

But oh, he can't bring himself to regret it.

Jason is leaning with his head against the window of the shuttle. His eyes are half-closed against the sunlight, slitted and sleepy. Samiel can just make out the soft colour of them, hidden away beneath his lashes.

His master's usually close cropped beard has grown slightly. The memory of that stubble scraping against him has Samiel shivering a little, in remembered pleasure. He can still taste Jason's skin under his lips; can still hear the sound of him, beautiful and desperate. 

In that, at least, his aunt had been wrong: if humans listen to Siren voices, then the reverse is also true. There is not one thing that Samiel would flinch from doing, if it was asked in that beautiful, crystalline voice; the sharp Interior accent ringing like a bell through him. 

The sound of Jason subsumed by pleasure is enough to send anyone mad. The sound of him commanding is enough to wipe out worlds.

_This is selfishness_ , Samiel thinks. 

He feels, perhaps, the closest to understanding his mother that he ever has in this moment. If she had thrown everything away for one minor, insignificant human, then how much more might she have done if it was over something like this?

The bond is a muted thing between them, lacework fine and forged with bonds of gold. 

He hadn't been lying when he told Jason it felt like the sun. 

Jason is calm – a soothing presence threading through Samiel. The feel of him is like coming home. Like sitting on a warm summer's day in a meadow; the hot, sweet smell of grass surrounding him, and the kiss of sunlight against his skin. It is a beautiful, soporific thing, tempering the worst of his own impulses with the balance of his master's rationale.

The lull of it – the sheer delight – is enough to have Samiel's contentment singing through him. The warmth of Jason settles bone deep into him, a gentle wash of light, with the ability to scorch if it wishes.

And that is the other side of it.

Jason can be fire and fury. He can burn white hot and bright when he angers. His balance and the grip he has on his temper are so much better than Samiel's, so much firmer. But what a delight it is to realise how deeply and how fiercely Jason feels.

Samiel had felt it when that harpy Hird – and that is probably a disservice to harpies everywhere, he thinks bitterly – had told them both to sit down and shut up. The vicious, burning spark of Jason's anger had flared up for one dizzying moment, before it had been carefully controlled again. The feel of it, the sudden fire of Jason, angry, was as surprising as it was wonderful.

He is greedy for more and he shouldn't be, Samiel thinks. He is a glutton, desperate for any scraps of himself that Jason will give him. A soul bond hasn't changed that. If anything, it's made it worse.

Where before he had to guess – had to obsess and pick over anything Jason might have told him – now, he is given glorious insight. They are not there completely, according to the Psyke, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen.

The thought leaves him winded, breathless. The very idea of his master as completely his, like that... until now it has been impossible; something not even dreamt of.

As though sensing the bent of his thoughts Jason turns his head a little. His eyes are still half lidded; his gaze considering.

The light is picking sharp threads of colour through his hair, and Samiel wants to lean over; to rest his head on his shoulder and press his face into his neck. He wants to breathe Jason in, until his lungs ache with the scent of him. 

He has never lied about wanting Jason. He has never been able to. From the moment he saw him on Mas-Hain, there has been a keen, formless hunger in him. 

And now, even with the beginnings of a bond, it is not enough.

Samiel is selfish. He is wicked and voracious in his need. There is a primal urge to this – a need to crawl across broken spears and bodies, to wade through blood if needed, just to be closer to Jason. They are connected. Bound. 

He still wants more.

He had made the promise a long time ago, that he would never place his own desires above his Queen. Above Lenia. He had meant it.

He is a liar, he realises grimly, because the truth is that now he answers to an authority made not of family ties, and loyalty, but of need. Of selfish wants.

He is not worried about the consequences of Helenia Mirret's death, but he is terrified of facing his aunt. Of having to explain to her all the ways he has let her down. He will have to look her in the eye and tell her that he trusts a human, that he has chosen Jason over duty, and honour, and her.

His master.

His Jason.

The cool touch of fingers threading through his own gives him pause. He glances down, surprised.

Jason has turned his head away again, looking carefully out of the window. His fingers, laced with Samiel's, give a quick squeeze.

Samiel stares for a moment at the line of Jason's neck; the familiar angles of his face. For one terrible, beautiful moment, his overwhelming need for his master wipes everything else clean from his mind.

He has betrayed his aunt by forming this bond. He has lied to himself and broken his oath. He has killed and gone against his own principles. 

And he would do it again without hesitation.

_You can never trust anyone, Samiel_ , he remembers his aunt saying. _I will look after for you, but you must trust no one else. They will try to take advantage of you; of our connection._

But he trusts Jason. He has chosen Jason. The rightness of this bond cannot be denied and he won't do it.

He is going to have to be honest with his aunt and pray she will be merciful, because he cannot give this up. He will never be able to. He will take what he can, now, and he will face the consequences of his actions when he has to.

He is a traitor. A wicked liar and a disappointment.

He is his mother's son.


	4. Report: 11743/a/GR7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt came from the legendary [pippawrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pippawrites/pseuds/pippawrites), who asked for Littien's report on the whole Samiel/Jay mess. Fair warning, this is not a serious report in any way, shape or form. Takes place just after Helenia Mirret is murdered.
> 
> Warnings: minor bad language, Littien hates her job.

[23:32] – Following the discovery of Helenia Mirret Maa-Ilia's body, the Governor's residence has been placed on lockdown. Protocol 8IL has been implemented. All guests are being searched before they are allowed to leave the premises. 

[23:51] – Severne Tremark and Wing Commander Lane appear to be missing. It is unclear at present whether they have been abducted. 

Wing Commander Hird has expressed her displeasure at this apparent loss.

Vocally.

[03:13] – The Psyke cornered me in the suite earlier. He suggested that our search was perhaps focusing on the wrong areas. He advised me he will be talking to the Governor's head of security in the morning.

I advised him this was a bad idea.

“Well I'm known for those,” he said.

I do not think he was joking.

[11:09] – Security footage has been unearthed of a potential suspect vehicle parked outside the Governor's residence. 

[11:26] – Wing Commander Hird is pleased there have been developments. She is less pleased that Governor Mirret has ordered a sweep of all rooms in the human suite. She came to me and expressed her displeasure.

Vocally.

_[REDACTED 12:21] – I do not understand why the Psyke seems so charmed by that woman. She is hideously obnoxious. When I informed her I felt Wing Commander Lane might be the potential security breach, she told me to 'Go sit on a fucking cactus'. Animal._

[12:24] – I feel there are real concerns regarding the ongoing and potential relationship between Severne Tremark and Wing Commander Lane. Whilst I do not believe the Psyke or Wing Commander Hird are worried, I feel it is quite possible that Wing Commander Lane has used some undue influence to exert pressure on Severne Tremark. For what purpose I am not yet clear.

When I mentioned my concerns to the Psyke, he did not respond for a long while. He then asked why I believed Wing Commander Lane may be influencing Severne Tremark's actions.

_[REDACTED 12:27] – I told him I believed it because I had caught Severne Tremark trying to fuck Wing Commander Lane in the hospital garden. They were rutting in the mud like a pair of karveks._

[12:28] – I recounted how I had seen Wing Commander Lane and Severne Tremark in an intimate embrace, not long after the incident with the flightbikes that had landed Wing Commander Hird in hospital.

The Psyke said I may have been mistaken. He did not wait for my response, but asked if we could follow up on another potential lead he had found.

_[REDACTED 12:29] – I was definitely not mistaken. Tremark had his tongue so far down Lane's throat he was practically kissing his tonsils._

[12:29] – I am unclear at present if the Psyke is being deliberately obtuse about Lane and Tremark, or if he genuinely has not noticed their behaviour.

[14:01] – I am not wholly inclined to believe Governor Mirret's version of events. He has now come to me and advised he suspects Lane and Tremark of murdering his wife. He has been unable to provide me with a satisfactory answer as to why, but has pointed out that innocent people do not run.

He is not incorrect in his assertion. However, it is impossible to determine at present the truth of the matter. I have informed him we are keeping all avenues of enquiry open at present. He did not appear to like this.

_[REDACTED 15:51] – I am starting to think there is something contagious about humans. Not only has Severne Tremark made a fool of himself with that ground crawler Lane, but the Psyke has now apparently thrown himself at Wing Commander Hird. It was a galling display of emotion when he kissed her outside the shuttle._

_Am I missing something? Is there some sort of pheromone humans emit that I cannot sense? What is the endless fascination with them?_

_And Wing Commander Hird, of all people. I am not entirely certain which human is worse: Lane, or Hird._

_Probably Lane._

_At least if Hird was going to stab you anywhere, it would be straight between the eyes._

[23:09] – We have been searching for nearly three days now, and there is still no sign of Lane or Tremark. I am becoming concerned that Mirret may be right, and they have deliberately gone to ground after killing his wife.

How do I explain to my Queen that her most trusted Severne has betrayed her with a human? Worse, with one of our planet's most reviled enemies?

But I am still searching for motive. Why would Lane kill Helenia Mirret Maa-Ilia? It doesn't make much sense.

Mas-Hain did not make sense either, though.

[02:24] – Hird has come to me to complain that the investigation is not moving forward. I am slightly concerned about her mental state. She does not appear to have slept in at least two days.

She refused to listen when I suggested we now start to consider other potential outcomes for Lane and Tremark apart from kidnap. In fact, she reaffirmed her belief they were both being held prisoner.

She was most vocal.

Again.

_[REDACTED 02:27] – Is that woman anything other than vocal? I have yet to hear her offer one other alternative, but she is certainly capable of shouting down everyone else's suggestions. If she bellows much louder, I am going to lock her in the shuttle and to Hadises with the Psyke._

_Harriden._

[02:28] – I believe Hird and I do not share the same opinions on most things.

[08:14] – There is no conclusive evidence of anyone else present during the time of Helenia Mirret Maa-Ilia's murder. All forensic evidence demonstrates Lane and Tremark were with her. I am forced to conclude that the likeliest explanation is that Lane is indeed responsible in some way. If this is true, it is likely Severne Tremark has also chosen to participate in such an act.

_[REDCATED 08:17] – How do I tell Most Exalted? She has always been more lenient with Tremark than the rest of us, but she will be unable to overlook this betrayal. It will break her heart, most surely._

_What would drive him to side with Lane like this? The promise of money? More power? Surely he cannot be foolish enough to be chasing after Lane on the promise of a good fuck, and nothing more?_

_But I've seen the way he looks at that ground crawler. He is obsessed. It is dangerous._

_Lane is persuasive, Archon Ssafyr herself has said so. You cannot trust a man with a silver tongue. He could well be manipulating Tremark's affection for him._

_Why does Tremark even have affection for that monster, though? He nearly cost him his life._

_...This is too far above my ranking. I need to report it._

[11:11] – I tried again to discuss this matter with the Psyke. “Don't jump to conclusions,” he told me. The rebuke was gently done, but it was there.

I wonder why he is not at least considering the possibility. Does he know more than he is saying?

_[REDACTED 11:12] – It is hard to know who to trust some days. Most Exalted gave me this mission and it has gone terribly wrong. Now I am even questioning our own Psyke. He is beyond reproach and I should not be doing so._

_Tisiphene's tits, I need about seven years away from this mess, and nine drinks._

[16:01] – After days of searching, a breakthrough may have occurred. 

A surveillance droid has picked up evidence of an explosion in a small compound just passed Glessen in the desert. Such activity is unusual in itself, but the droid also captured images of three men fleeing the scene.

One of them has distinctly red hair.

I am very much hoping that one of the men is Lane. I can at least arrest him so that a proper inquiry may be undertaken.

[16:07] – Most Exalted has contacted me herself. I have updated her on what has happened. She has asked me to apprehend Lane, so that the truth can be uncovered.

She is showing so much faith in me, and I cannot fail her.

_[REDACTED 16:08] – I do not want to let her down as Tremark has done. Our Queen has suffered enough over the recent years. First with Athannus stirring trouble where he can, and now with this rebellion. More than anything, if she can prove that the humans are responsible for Mas-Hain, for murdering Helenia Mirret Maa-Ilia, then this will silence her detractors._

_How will they be able to say she stands for only war, when she is the one person who has tried to let peace prevail?_

[17:19] – I have informed the Psyke and Hird what has happened. Unsurprisingly, Hird wanted to charge straight off with absolutely no plan.

_[REDACTED 17:20] – Is this what counts as intelligence in the human military? That woman is so shockingly impulsive and with no filter. If she is the standard, then I am amazed the human armies as a whole have not simply wiped one another out. How do they actually achieve anything, if they are all so bad-tempered?_

[17:21] – The Psyke has talked Hird into standing down until we can at least arrange transport. She was snapping at him so much, I thought for one moment she was going to rip his jugular out with her teeth. I am surprised he allows her to behave in such a manner.

He is our Psyke, the keeper of our souls. He should be accorded respect. Instead, he is letting her run rampant over centuries of tradition and honour.

And she calls us horrific.

[07:44] – The situation is far worse than I feared.

We were able to track Lane and Tremark to Glessen. We found them in a room above a bar off the main street.

You would have had to be blind to miss what they had been doing.

Even ignoring the obnoxiously large kythria decorating Lane's neck, the whole room was a testament to what had been going on.

Tremark is worse than I thought. He feels too deeply and loves too hard. It has always been his weakness. He is a greedy, possessive child who has found a new toy in Lane.

Lane, in turn, is clearly encouraging all of his worst tendencies.

_[REDACTED 07:48] – What does it say about Tremark's selfishness, that he would choose that man, that creature, over his own people?_

_I may doubt that either of them had anything to do with Helenia – that is for a court to decide – but the sickness of Tremark's desperation is written all over him._

_He has dishonoured the rank he holds. It is clear when watching them together. It is evident this is not some brief affair, some illness that can be burnt away when sated. Tremark looked at Lane as though..._

_As though..._

_I don't know. I can't describe it._

_But it is not some trifling thing, to be washed away with time and the forgiveness of our Queen. So help me, it almost looked like the stories of logosykia, which is insane._

_Perhaps Tremark believes himself in love. Perhaps Lane has nurtured that belief; has persuaded Tremark to abandon all reason._

_He certainly had no reason left at all when we entered the room. Quite frankly I wasn't sure if he was half a breath from fighting us all, or fucking Lane again._

_I need twenty drinks and some brain bleach._

[08:04] – That conniving sow Hird has stepped in and arrested Lane. I am utterly convinced she tripped me deliberately on the stairs as we were attempting to storm the room. 

_[REDACTED 08:04] – Why did our murderer not do everyone a favour and shoot her, instead?_

[08:05] – Lane is now in human custody. There is nothing I can do about this, at present. I will speak to Most Exalted when we return to the shuttle and ask for her advice.

[09:03] – Most Exalted has asked that we return as soon as possible to Maa-Tarek, so that is what we are doing. I have agreed to submit a full report upon my return. She has asked that I spare no detail.

I worry that the depth of Tremark's betrayal will be a cruel blow to her. But...I have sworn she will have the truth.

Perhaps I can run this past the First Handmaiden, before it is given to the Queen.

_[REDCATED 09:04] – Besides, if I have to live with the knowledge of what Lane looks like freshly fucked, then so should everyone else. I'm not suffering through this alone._

[10:46] – Lane and Tremark are holding hands. It's worse than I thought.

Hird took one look at my expression and asked 'How it felt to swallow a nice, hot bucket of “mind your own fucking business"?'

I hate that woman.

_[REDACTED 10:47] – I'm asking for a bloody transfer. I can't deal with these humans any more. They're dreadful._

_I need sixty drinks and a lobotomy._

_Maybe Most Exalted will be merciful and let me retire to the middle of the Maa-Ilian desert to live in a cave, in peace._

\- Report: 11743/a/GR7, Littien, R., submitted 07:21:23, Standard


	5. In Each Place and Forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, going along writing the next chapter of _Icarus_ and my brain latched onto an AU idea that it literally wouldn't leave alone, to the point that it absolutely consumed my thoughts. Basically, what would Samiel be like if he'd been raised by his mother? So, what started as a [tiny drabble](https://ladyinbooks.tumblr.com/post/188749106341/minding-my-own-business-going-about-the-daily) on the tumbleweed tumblr has turned into 15k+ of ridiculousness. Expect absolutely no redeeming features here, this is purely for fun. There's no real worldbuilding and a heck of a lot of vague hand-wavy stuff (because of spoilers for _Icaurs_ ). Next chapter of _Icarus_ should be up Wednesday.
> 
> Warnings: Explicit, smut, AU, morally grey Samiel, time jumps, Samiel is a possessive little idiot no matter which reality he inhabits, Jay is consistently exasperated. (Title from 'Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem.)

Here, when I say I never want to be without  
you,  
somewhere else I am saying,  
I never want to be without you again. And  
when I touch you  
in each of the places we meet,

in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that  
are dying  
and resurrected.  
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any  
life.  
In each place and forever.  
_  
**\- Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem – Bob Hicok**_

When Jay is twelve and living on Catta, a family moves in next door.

The husband has a sweet smile and his wife has kind hands. Their son is mischievous. He is younger than Jay and brimming with curiosity. 

For five years he follows Jay around, fascinated and constantly questioning. He chatters about anything and everything; demands Jay's attention with a cheerful, possessive selfishness that Jay doesn't mind. He becomes a small, important part of both their families.

But when Samiel is ten, he moves away. 

Jay misses him, for a while. But his life is just beginning and he has so many important things to worry about. Before long, Samiel is nothing but a distant memory.

And that is where it ends.

Or, it should be.

*

When Jay is thirty, he is evacuated from Ley Seven following injury.

Four broken ribs, he is told. A shattered leg; concussion and a hairline fracture of the scapula. Recovery will take months, even with treatment. He is confined, furious, to administrative work.

“You have been asked for specifically,” Ambassador Lault tells Jay one day, not long after he is first assigned to the diplomatic corps. His expression is curious as he examines Jay; his gaze assessing.

Jay stares at him, bemused. “I don't know anyone on Lenia,” he says. His leg is throbbing and he can feel a headache building. He watches as Lault settles himself into a chair, and remains standing stiffly at attention.

“Well someone on Lenia knows you,” Lault says. “And since we are trying very hard not to go to war with the Lenians, I am going to oblige their request. So. Pack your bags.” He smiles, benignly.

“But I have work to do here – ” Jay begins.

“All of which can wait until your return, I am sure.” Lault's smile remains; the expression in his eyes hardens. “That is an order, Wing Commander.”

There is a helpless curiosity in Jay – an overwhelming need to always be asking why. It is there now, burning in the back of his mind. Why has someone asked for him? Who does he know? He is nobody important, or special. Certainly he has never met the Queen, or even any of the court of Lenia.

“Alright,” he says. He watches as Lault dips his head in acknowledgement. “I'll pack.”

*

Wing Commander Hird has a reputation for being utterly ruthless – and outstandingly rude – when she chooses to be.

When Jay first met her she was swearing at some Raxians, who had been unlucky enough to have scratched the side of her ship. The air had been impressively blue by the time she had finished, and the Raxians were clearly torn between absolute horror, and the abject fear that if they opened their mouths to protest, she would start up again.

Watching her in the Lenian court now, Jay is reminded of a very angry bull in a very delicate china shop.

That is, until a tall, lanky Siren comes barrelling out of the surrounding crowd of courtiers. He elbows people out of the way, hair falling in his eyes as he waves at Hird.

“Evi!” he says enthusiastically.

And Hird – Hird _softens_.

It is strange to see. The slow, delicate unwinding of the tension in her limbs, as the Siren babbles on about how he'd meant to be in the landing party but had been held up, and how he'd then tried to catch up with the human delegation, but they'd already gone in.

His animated enthusiasm is odd; unexpected in the face of the formality of the court. In his own peculiar way, Jay realises, this newcomer is being as socially out of step as Hird.

“They're always like that,” a voice says against Jay's ear, soft and low. “You have to forgive his behaviour; he doesn't see her often.”

Jay turns.

A Siren is behind him – and how he got so close without Jay realising, he doesn't know. He's tall, his hair a mop of curls, his eyes gold and bright. There is a strange expression on his face as he examines Jay – there and gone so quickly Jay thinks he might have imagined it.

“Hello, Wing Commander Lane,” he says.

Jay clears his throat. “Hello.”

The lovely angles of the Siren's face are stark, thrown into high relief by the lighting in the throne room and the way he tilts his head. He is beautiful in a way that makes Jay's heart hammer. 

“I hope you'll forgive me for requesting your presence,” the Siren says. “I heard you were injured.”

“You – ” Jay swallows, throat dry, and licks his lips. The Siren's gaze flickers down briefly, and were Jay not far too sensible, he could have sworn he was looking at his mouth. “You asked for me?”

“Of course I did. I heard you were injured and I wanted to make sure you were alright.” 

“Why? You don't know me.”

The Siren stares at him, blankly. “Yes I do.”

“Ah,” Lault says from behind them, “Decime, I apologise. You have not been properly introduced.”

_Decime_ , Jay thinks. _Second-favourite_. The man standing in front of him is set to inherit the throne, if all goes according to plan. He is the favoured candidate.

Nerves prickle down Jay's spine, and he looks at the Siren again. This time, he pays attention. Under that beauty and the serene expression, the Siren's eyes are sharp; calculating. His movements are economic and precise. He has the long, lean strength of a swordsman. His head is tilted, considering, as he stares at Lault.

“That is perfectly alright,” the Decime says to Lault. “I was just explaining to Wing Commander Lane that I requested his presence during these talks.”

“Yes,” Lault says agreeably. “We were happy to oblige, of course.”

A small smile flickers across the Decime's face, there and gone and so deliberate that Jay can't help but follow the curve of his lips with his eyes. 

“Of course,” the Decime echoes.

Jay tears his gaze away and looks at Lault, because if he doesn't he might do something foolish, like reach out and push back the curl resting by the Decime's ear. And then they'll have a galactic crisis on their hands.

“And I was just explaining to the Decime that I was surprised he knew of me,” he says instead.

“As I said to Wing Commander Lane: I do not know of him,” the Decime says pleasantly, “I know him.”

Lault looks surprised. “You've met before?”

“No,” Jay says, at the same time as the Decime nods.

“Catta,” the Decime says. He takes one of Jay's hands in his own, ignoring the ripple of quiet exclamations this causes amongst those nearby. “We used to live close to one another.”

There is a memory stirring at the back of Jay's mind: a cheerful, mischievous child, with an inquisitive nature and a penchant for following Jay around.

“ _Samiel?_ ” he says, incredulous.

Samiel dips his head. His expression is bland, except for the way he watches Jay from beneath his lashes.

“Hello Jason,” he says.

*

Two weeks into the talks and they are not getting anywhere fast.

The Queen is generally uninterested in making her peace with the human interlopers. Rather, she seems far more focused on the apparently prevailing question of her successor.

Samiel, from what Jay can gather, is definitely the favourite. There are other candidates, most raised to compete for this highest of offices, but they are not as quick; not as clever. Several of them have been quite efficiently and ruthlessly dispatched in the last three years, and nobody has quite managed to point the finger at any one person.

When Jay asks Samiel about this, Samiel smiles at him. “That is the nature of competing for power,” he says. “It is surprising the number of people who still want to try.”

“You have,” Jay points out. “Aren't you worried the same thing will happen to you?”

The look Samiel gives him is sheer arrogance. He is disdainful in the face of Jay's question; chin tilted as he leans back in his chair. “Don't be ridiculous.”

“But it might. You only have to be unlucky – ” 

“I am competent,” Samiel says. “I am clever, I am fast. I think in ways they do not. You believe Sirens alone have found ways to be duplicitous?” He shrugs. “Humans are as much masters of these arts as us, and I learnt well.”

Jay stares at him. “That's not all we are.”

“Of course not, but morality does not interest me, Jason. Succeeding does.”

“The other candidates may be as clever as you,” Jay says carefully. “They might try and hurt you. It isn't sensible, Samiel; not the promise of power at the cost of your life. Nothing is worth that.”

The look Samiel gives him is strange, indefinable.

“Some things are,” he says.

*

Three days after their conversation, Theagenes Ritner is killed.

He had been a strong contender for the throne; probably favourite after Samiel. Until now he has been careful and avoided any and all attempts on his life.

“Contact poison,” Lault murmurs, as he and Jay stare, horrified, at the man wailing in agony on the floor. “It must be. He hasn't eaten anything; hasn't drunk anything.”

Around them, the Lenian court is mostly silent. Theagenes' screams echo, hollow and disturbing in the high-ceilinged vastness of the room. 

From the corner of his eye Jay can see Deneira, straight-backed on her throne. She is watching dispassionately with the rest of the court, as Theagenes gurgles.

“The only place to put something like that would have been his mask,” Jay says, mind racing. “Clothes are too risky, too obvious. They keep their masks with them at all times. They all wear them.” _Except Deneira_ , he doesn't say. _And Samiel._

He is unsure if Samiel's refusal to wear a mask is further arrogance, or a deliberate attempt to distance himself from his Lenian heritage in at least one way. _Here I am_ , his bare face seems to challenge. _Read into that what you will_.

“You're saying he was poisoned through his mask?” Lault's voice is strained. He recoils a little, as though horrified. “He breathed that in?”

In front of them, a masked noble has knelt down next to Theagenes. She hesitates for a moment, then reaches out with gloved fingers to prise the mask from his face.

“Who would – ” Lault says, staring at the way Theagenes' face is slowly turning purple; his tongue lolling as he wheezes out his last breaths.

_Someone clever_ , Jay thinks. _Someone fast_. Helplessly, his gaze turns to Samiel.

Their eyes meet, and Jay has to suppress his instinctive jolt of surprise. 

Samiel is not watching Theagenes and his death throes. He is not looking at the court and their muted, stifled horror. He is staring at Jay, intent. His eyes are bright; burning under the fall of his hair. His lips are slightly parted. 

It is almost, Jay thinks, as though Samiel has been holding his breath, waiting for Jay to look at him. 

Waiting for Jay to acknowledge what he's done.

Realisation hits, and Jay glances once at Theagenes – almost gone, now – and then back to Samiel.

Samiel hasn't moved; hasn't flinched. His gaze is fixed on Jay. If he recognises Jay's comprehension, he doesn't show it. 

He looks, Jay thinks, a heartbeat away from crossing the room. From stepping casually across Theagenes' twitching limbs, to present himself in front of Jay, secure in the knowledge he will be welcomed in spite of what he has done.

_Did I do this?_ Jay thinks, the first icy finger of fear making itself known down his spine. _Did I push him to this by talking of the risk?_

His intention had been to provoke Samiel into contemplating a different path. 

He has done that, he thinks, as understanding dawns cold and implacable, and he watches Samiel watching him. He has pushed Samiel into looking at this competition in a different way.

It is just not the way he intended.

There is a ringing silence, as the last of Theagenes' death throes die away in the room. Jay barely recognises it for what it means, over the thundering of his heart and the guilt sitting heavy in his stomach. He cannot look away from Samiel; cannot bring himself to turn from that deep, unrelenting observation.

Footsteps, and a Siren steps forward. She casually skirts around Theagenes and stops, an arm's length from Samiel.

Jay recognises her; recognises the mask of Chantis Tarr, another contender.

Chantis bows, low and sweeping, to Samiel. Her actions cause a collective intake of breath; a flurry of whispers as people murmur to one another, shocked.

“Decime,” Chantis says.

It is capitulation, Jay realises. It is public surrender.

The biggest threat has been removed ruthlessly from the board, and Chantis has decided that the throne is not worth the inevitability of Samiel's attention turning to her.

“Chantis,” Samiel says softly.

More movement; another contender.

They follow then, one after another. A line of penitents, all eager to make a withdrawal of any claim to the crown.

Theagenes' very public death is deliberate, Jay realises. A spectacle designed to inspire terror, and the dawning understanding that nowhere is safe from Samiel; no one is untouchable. 

It is clever. Ruthlessly clever.

_I caused this_ , Jay thinks, horrified. _I whispered words, and the most powerful man on the planet listened to them._

The contenders are still publicly conceding; still humbling themselves before the man who will be King.

And Samiel has not looked at one of them, still intent on Jay.

Helplessly, hopelessly, Jay watches as he begins to smile.

Jay's heart is in his throat, pulse pounding at the very obvious acknowledgement of his place in this. Of the recognition that Samiel is presenting in his unrelenting observation. 

This, he realises, struck with terror, is what it is like to shape worlds.

*

They are in the garden.

They have been on Lenia for four weeks now, and the days are cooling slowly. The heat from the suns is not as strong, and the air is pleasantly balmy. 

The last week has been productive, and Jay has been busy. The talks are finally moving forwards – Deneira at last gracing them with her presence, now she is no longer distracted by the machinations of her court – and Lault has been keeping Jay close.

When he had been given this assignment, Jay had expected to be designated as a clerk, at best. But Lault, perhaps capitalising on the fact that Jay apparently has connections neither of them realised, has insisted Jay participate.

For the most part he has enjoyed the experience. Far more, he admits to himself, than he thought possible.

There is something infinitely satisfying in creating new possibilities; in helping to organise and negotiate. To turn clever phrases into actions both sides can agree on, and to weave a carefully constructed argument into the forged bonds of peace.

That the talks have mostly kept him away from Samiel has not hurt, either.

But today Samiel has refused to take no for an answer, and Jay has found himself towed helplessly along in the wake of some very public, very polite insistence.

Lault had been no help either, deeming it both appropriate and necessary for Jay to continue to forge links with the future King.

Which leads them to now.

“If you think much louder,” Samiel murmurs, “they might be able to hear you on the other side of Maa-Tarek.” He is laying flat on his back in the grass, eyes closed against the sunlight.

The sight of him, long-limbed and lovely in rest, is enough to have Jay frowning against his own wants. Samiel is golden and beautiful; his hair a tangled mess of curls against the green of the grass. A petulant, playful god, Jay thinks, at ease amongst the lowly mortals he has graced with his presence.

The bent of his thoughts does not surprise him, after four weeks in Samiel's company. It has been long enough for Jay to realise that, in spite of himself, he is drawn to this impossible, capricious creature. 

Samiel's ruthlessness, his callous disregard for morality when it suits him, has done nothing to ease the burning want that Jay has discovered lurking in the depths of his soul.

Samiel has grown up, and he has grown up into the kind of man that Jay would very much have taken to bed, were he anyone else.

“I mean it,” Samiel says. He sighs, opening his eyes. “Your head is going to explode at this rate.”

“If my head is going to explode, it will be your fault,” Jay says tartly, before he can stop himself.

That gets Samiel's attention in a way he is not anticipating.

“Why?” he says slowly. “Am I making you think too hard?” The expression on his face is lazy; indulgent. The curve of his mouth is just slightly too knowing for Jay's peace of mind.

Jay is very much beginning to regret saying anything at all, and so he retreats into sarcasm. “If you're making me think too hard, it's only about how on earth you can afford to waste time with the lowest member of the diplomatic corps, when you should be using that useless perception of yours to build bridges with the rest of our delegation.”

“But I am building bridges,” Samiel says. He rolls over, crawls a handful of feet and flings himself down again, so his head is resting in Jay's lap.

Jay stiffens, surprised, and buries the very real impulse to shove Samiel off of him.”This is not building bridges,” he says.

The noise Samiel makes is contemptuous. He settles himself more comfortably, tilting his head up so he can see Jay. “What would you call this then?”

“Laziness,” Jay says, and takes care not to stare at the long lines of Samiel's neck.

“I disagree. I'm talking to the only member of the human delegation I care to,” Samiel says. “And what's this, if not cementing alliances?” Idly he reaches down, plucking one of Jay's hands up between his own so he can examine it.

“Your ambassador should be proud,” he adds, running the crescent of one thumbnail down the tender, sensitive skin on the inside of Jay's wrist.

Jay shivers a little at the touch. Samiel makes a low, pleased sound at the discovery and does it again.

“I don't think this is what Lault would have in mind,” Jay manages dryly, around the sudden sharp burst of want lodged in his throat.

“More fool him, then,” Samiel murmurs. He raises Jay's wrist to his mouth, pressing a lingering kiss to the pulse point. His lips are soft, reverent, and the gesture has Jay inhaling sharply.

“Samiel – ” 

“Don't tell me you don't want this too,” Samiel says. His tongue flickers out, darting a quick swipe across Jay's skin and away. “You're a liar if you say you don't.”

“What I want,” Jay says carefully, “is not relevant.”

“It's the only thing that matters,” Samiel contradicts. He looks up at Jay, mischievous, and kisses a slow trail from the inside of his wrist, to the tip of one finger.

“I – ” Jay says.

In his head, there are perfectly logical reasons for this not to happen. Chief amongst them is the very real fact that Samiel is an unknown, potentially hostile entity, in a foreign court. And if Jay fucks the future King of Lenia and then screws the whole thing up, he is fairly confident that will be the end of any hope of a future alliance.

And his career.

The next kiss Samiel presses to his wrist is open-mouthed and hard. It wipes all thought from Jay's head in that instant. There is a gentle hint of teeth and a glorious sort of pressure, as Samiel sucks a throbbing mark into the pale skin on the underside of Jay's wrist.

The strange pleasure of it, the heat of Samiel's mouth and the way his gaze never leaves Jay's face once, has Jay's mind scrambling to find coherence. There is reason, and there is logic, and then there is this.

“I – ” he says again, trying to form his argument.

Samiel draws back, mouth reddened, and licks over the mark he has made. It is already forming, stark against the pale of Jay's skin. “You're mine, Jason,” he says, with the kind of bone-deep certainty that is dizzying to hear. “You always have been.”

For a moment, Jay thinks of Samiel at five. At eight. At ten and leaving Catta for the last time. That boy is a distant memory; a strange impression, there and gone. The thought of that child, long ago, slips through his fingers and vanishes. He doesn't recognise him in the man before him now. 

“That's not what we were,” he says.

Samiel shrugs; he tilts his head back further and grins. “It's what we were always going to be, eventually.” 

“You're very confident,” Jay says, because he's not sure how to argue against this. How can you win with logic, when there's none to be found?

“I'm honest,” Samiel says. “I wouldn't lie to you.”

“I don't want – ” Jay begins, because he has to derail this somehow. There is too much at stake; too much to lose. Couple that with the tender, terrifying way Samiel is looking at him, and he cannot face the thought of holding that much power over anyone, let alone Samiel.

_He killed a man because of my words_ , he reminds himself, and the thought does not hold as much horror now as it should. Not with Samiel watching him.

“You do.” Samiel reaches up, traces the pad of his thumb over Jay's lower lip and smiles. “Oh, sweetheart, you definitely do.”

*

At the talks the next morning, Samiel has somehow managed to wrangle himself a seat next to Jay.

He has been attending the negotiations on and off, but always at Deneira's right hand. With his very public victory over Theagenes, she seems to have taken him at least somewhat under her guidance. The sight of those two, with their heads bent closer together in conspiracy, sometimes send a thrill of unease down Jay's spine.

But today Samiel is lounging in a chair at the human end of the table, looking decidedly pleased with himself.

“What are you doing?” Jay asks warily, sinking down in the seat next to him. “Shouldn't you be sitting with your colleagues?”

Samiel shrugs. “There's no law against sitting with you, is there?”

“There isn't,” Lault confirms from opposite him. “And we'd be delighted to have your company, Decime.” He shoots Jay a warning look.

“Delighted,” Jay echoes dryly. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Samiel's lips twitch, as though he is suppressing a smile.

The talks begin in earnest once Deneira has arrived for the day, and Jay busies himself with ignoring Samiel and focusing on the task ahead. Namely, convincing the Lenians to open a second trade route through the Persmin quadrant, in exchange for further tax alleviations on imported silks.

Samiel, for the most part, remains silent. Whenever Jay happens to glance at him, he is watching the proceedings with interest, or taking notes on his linkpad.

“You must understand,” one of the Lenian delegation is saying, somewhere around the third hour mark, “that the financial loss of lifting tariffs in the Persim quadrant, will not be compensated by tax alleviations on one product alone when importing to human-designated colonies.”

He has a point, Jay thinks, but the truth of the matter is that Lenian silk is becoming unmarketable, due to the high taxes currently placed on it. The loss in the Persim quadrant will easily be counterbalanced by the sale of more silks, once they become more affordable.

“Katchis Julea,” Samiel murmurs in his ear, and Jay startles a little. “His family have been responsible for that particular finance stream for the last forty years.” The amusement in his voice is palpable.

Jay tilts his head a little, moving closer to Samiel and ignoring the soft hitch he can hear in Samiel's breathing. “Which begs the question,” he says, lips barely moving, “what exactly is it he wants, if he's going to lose that income?”

Samiel hums, quiet and thoughtful. “Make him responsible for overseeing the process of importing Lenian silks to Elysium and he might change his mind.”

“Something I can't do.”

Jay feels, more than sees, the smile beginning to creep its way across Samiel's face.

“No,” he says, lips brushing soft and delicate against the shell of Jay's ear. “But I can.”

*

“What the fuck is that?” Hird asks.

She is staring at Jay's wrist, the pair of them in the training room on the Banshee, and the surprise in her voice sets Jay's teeth on edge.

“It's – ” 

“I know what it is,” she says. “That was fucking rhetorical.” The shock in her tone is unnerving. Her expression even more so. “Kythria, Lane? I mean, what the fuck? Who with?”

“Kythria?” Jay repeats, puzzled. He glances down at his wrist – at the imprint of Samiel's mouth, deep and dark against his skin. 

“A mating declaration.” Hird's voice is exasperated; frustrated. “Who the fuck has been courting you?”

“ _What?_ ”

“I know it's none of us,” Hird says. “We're not that fucking possessive for a start. So who is it? For fuck's sake, it's not one of those fucking diplomats you've been talking to, is it?”

“How the hell do you know about this?” Jay asks, instead of answering her question. His wrist throbs; a reminder of Samiel's teeth, days ago in the garden.

“Because I asked questions and actually took the time to properly fucking plan when it happened to me,” she says crossly. 

“What, courting?”

“Yes, courting,” she says, eyes narrowed. 

Courting. 

It makes, Jay realises, a terrible kind of sense.

_I am competent_ , Samiel had said. _I am clever; I am fast._ Not, as Jay had assumed, a boast. Rather, a declaration of his qualities. 

And then Theagenes: a threat taken care of; eliminated before he became a problem. At the time Jay had believed it was simply because he had planted the idea in Samiel's head. And he had, hadn't he? Even if it wasn't what he had intended, he'd thought Samiel had listened, and chosen a more direct route to the throne, based on what he believed was Jay's advice.

But that hadn't been it at all, Jay realises. 

Samiel had taken Jay's words as a challenge, a demand to prove his worth: stay alive. Do what you have to in order to succeed.

Then Katchis Julea, and the gift of Samiel's advice. Of the way he had stayed with Jay for the rest of the talks that week. How Julea had withdrawn his objections on the fourth day, gaze darting nervously at the human delegation, refusing to look directly at Samiel lounging, insouciant, next to Jay.

Now, this.

Kyrthria.

“I think,” Jay says slowly to Hird, “you had better explain this to me. From the beginning.”

*

“You're courting me,” Jay says bluntly, when Samiel answers his knock.

The look Samiel gives him is amused; a little despairing. He pulls Jay into his rooms and shuts the door. “You've only just worked this out?” he asks. “I've been trying for weeks.”

“Why?” Jay asks. “Is this some quick fuck? Are you trying to get something out of your system?” He is trying to understand; to get Samiel to explain. But if the way the look on Samiel's face darkens is any indication, he's just managed to put his foot in it spectacularly.

“ _'Some quick fuck'_ ,” Samiel repeats. The expression in his eyes is morphing. Gentle humour is being replaced by something coiled and predatory. “You think you're just 'some quick fuck'?” He takes a step forwards, then another.

“I'm trying to understand what it is you want,” Jay says. 

Samiel bares his teeth. It is not a smile. “What I want from you is not _quick_ ,” he says, with vicious contempt. “It is nowhere near quick.” One hand pushes hard against Jay's shoulder, sending him back a step and against the door. “Now turn off your translators and I'll show you what I want from you.”

“Absolutely not,” Jay says. “You know what that would do to me.”

“Jason,” Samiel says, into the bare inches between them, “turn them off.”

“Why?” Jay asks, instead of the 'no' he'd meant to give.

“Because I am going to prove to you exactly what you are to me,” Samiel says. “Now, trust me and turn them off. By my blood and my oath, I swear no harm will come to you from this.”

Jay hesitates a moment, thinking.

There is risk here. Real risk. 

Samiel has sworn – Sirens do not take oaths lightly – but his definition of 'harm' and Jay's may not match. Jay has heard the lectures, had the training, on what an unfiltered Siren voice can do to the human brain. Madness may be a blessing, in comparison to blind obedience.

But.

He wants to know.

“Deactivate seven seven two alpha one five,” he says, voice steady and hands shaking. He feels the distinctive pop of his translators powering down.

Before he can draw breath, Samiel is on him. He slams them both hard against the door. They are pressed together, Samiel working a leg between both of Jay's, before Jay can open his mouth to protest. 

Samiel leans close, arms bracketing Jay's head. His curls tickle Jay's temple, his cheek. “There,” he says in Standard, “that's better.”

The sound of him is like liquid gold: purring and malevolent and lovely. His voice sinks into Jay's consciousness, hooking claws deep into his psyche and pulling. Jay's lips part on a helpless moan, half-strangled, as he shudders at the sound of Samiel.

_Why did I agree to this?_ he wonders, and can't bring himself to examine the answer he already knows.

“Are you listening?” Samiel asks, his mouth brushing the curve of Jay's ear, sliding down to his jaw. “Pay attention.”

It is difficult. It is so, so difficult.

There is a promise, sweet and dark in Samiel's voice. An ominous crescendo of possession and blooming desire. It has Jay wanting to pant his pleasure at the sound into the hollow of Samiel's throat. To tilt his head back and capture Samiel's mouth with his own. But to do that would be to silence that terrible loveliness.

“Please,” he says instead, unsure if he's asking for more, or for Samiel to stop. He feels Samiel shudder against him at the word.

“No. No, I want you to listen darling, beloved, heartsong. You listen to me. You're mine and I am yours. I want to fuck you, and I want to make love to you. I want to worship you, until there is no other thought in your head but me. I want to string you out with pleasure, until you can't remember your own name. I'll give you anything you want; anything you ask will be yours.”

That voice, that stunning, screaming chorus – so unlike anything else – is wrapping itself around Jay's thoughts; his mind. Samiel's words pour into him, filthy and desperate. It's all Jay can think about, fingers shaking as he buries them in the curls at the nape of Samiel's neck.

“This is a lifetime,” Samiel is saying. “It's not here and gone. This is twenty years from now, when I'll still want to flip you over and fuck into you, and let you tell me what to do. Command me to do anything and I will. That's how this works. I'll burn the world for you, if that's what you want.” His hips hitch once against Jay's, an unthinking press that has them both panting.

“Samiel,” Jay says, and even around the tender brutality of Samiel's words, the currents of his voice, he realises he can think, albeit in a stilted, desperate way. “What – ” 

“You're mine,” Samiel repeats. “My mate. Mine.” His lips are pulled back in a snarl as he bites at the corner of Jay's jaw, stingingly sweet. “I want to bury myself so far into you that neither of us will ever feel whole again, when we are apart. I want to sink into your soul and wrap it around my own. You wanted to know what I want from you? Now you do. This was _never_ 'some quick fuck'.”

The ugliness of it, the sheer possession and greed in Samiel's voice, leaves Jay reeling. He's hard from nothing more than the pressure of Samiel against him; the raw, violent strength of his words.

“You've known me four weeks,” he manages.

“I've known you a lifetime,” Samiel corrects. “And lifetimes before that. I've tried to be patient, my pretty human. I've tried to take the proper steps and court you correctly, but _you asked_.”

“Theagenes,” Jay says, trying to sort through this; trying to work around the need to push Samiel down onto the floor and rut against him. He feels Samiel still for a moment. “Did you – ” 

Samiel trills, soft and gentle. “Of course I did,” he says. “Did you like that? Did that impress you?” The currents in his voice are shifting, sweetening into a desperate need to please. 

The lure of his voice has Jay wanting to reassure him; to press kisses into his skin and show him just how very, very pleased he was.

But it's not the truth. Not yet.

_But, oh God, it could be._

“You killed a man,” he says instead.

“I did,” Samiel says. He slides a hand down, palming Jay's side, rubbing a thumb across his hipbone. For a moment, his fingers are so close to where Jay wants them to be, that he loses the thread of his thoughts.

“I did,” Samiel says again. He tugs at the hem of Jay's top, fingers greedy for skin. “You told me nothing was worth my life, and you were wrong. But he worried you; he was a threat. I got rid of him.” 

_Aren't I clever?_ his voice says in harmonies. _Isn't this what you want from me?_

For a moment, Jay is dizzy with the possibility of it: Samiel, his. A king made to do what he commands. It is heart-stopping, the thought of empires crumbling at their feet.

“No,” he says, and he means the thought of it, but Samiel keens against him, wounded and raw. “No,” Jay says again, gentling his fingers in Samiel's hair. He explains incoherently: “Not that.”

“Oh,” Samiel says, breathless. “Alright.”

Jay leans forward, leans up, and brushes his lips against Samiel's.

The first, delicate press is sweet and gentle. Jay pulls away, breathes, and Samiel moans low and broken against him.

“Jason,” he says.

There is no compulsion, no lure in Samiel's voice, but the desperation is enough. The want, the ceaseless hunger, is enough to have Jay kissing him again. 

It is not slow the second time; not delicate and careful. Samiel kisses back deeply. He slides his tongue into Jay's mouth, and takes what he wants. The conquest of it is dizzying: the way Samiel bites down, viciously tender on Jay's lower lip, his hand on Jay's side as he pushes closer.

Jay pulls him closer, licks into Samiel's mouth and listens, dazed, to the sound Samiel makes as he lets him. His lips are soft and yielding and Jay pulls away, lungs burning, only to lean in and kiss him again.

There is power here, Jay realises, and a hunger that is most definitely not all Samiel's. 

He tugs him closer, as Samiel's fingers scrabble helplessly at the waist of his trousers for a moment. The noise he makes into Jay mouth is pure frustration. Jay smiles, feeling Samiel sigh against him, and then pulls away again.

For a moment Samiel follows, until Jay places a hand between them, pushing gently.

“I think,” he says hoarsely, and watches the way Samiel's eyes darken at the sound of his voice, “you need to consider if this is what you really want.”

The worst of it is, it is not an excuse for Samiel to stop. The excuse is for Jay. Samiel has made his desires clear. But he is young. He is full of life and vibrant. He will be King, and Jay is – 

Is – 

“How else do you want me to prove this to you?” Samiel demands. “What more do you want? Shall I kill the Queen now? Would that please you?” He leans closer, trailing kisses across Jay's cheekbone until he can nuzzle his temple.

“Four weeks,” Jay reminds him. “Barely a month.” He wavers, caught between the overwhelming desire to bite kisses into Samiel's mouth, and the unceasing certainty that he needs to make Samiel understand what he is promising himself to.

“I told you: lifetimes,” Samiel says dismissively.

“I am not going to bring you political weight or value,” Jay tells him. “I am not going to provide an alliance, or riches. You need to – ” 

Samiel groans, annoyed. He tugs Jay away from the door, sweeps a leg around the back of Jay's knee and sends them both tumbling to the floor.

Jay hits the ground hard, goes to roll with the movement, and ends up with Samiel straddling him. His weight is a shock, warm and heavy, and Jay bucks up, unthinking. Both of them lose the thread of the argument for a moment, in the mutual pleasure of their cocks rubbing together. Even through layers of clothing, Jay can feel Samiel is as hard as he is. The pressure is maddening.

“Oh,” Samiel says, lashes fluttering closed as Jay watches him, stunned and aroused. “That wasn't what I – ” He trails off, panting. He drops his head forwards, rolling his hips again mindlessly, pushing down against Jay.

Jay bites his tongue around the sound he wants to make. “Take the time to consider,” he says instead, and barely recognises his own voice.

“No,” Samiel says. He opens his eyes to look at Jay, and the heat in his gaze is unmistakable. “No, that's not how this works.” He scrambles backwards until he is somewhere near Jay's shins, pinning him. “Tell me no,” he demands. “Tell me no and I'll stop, but apart from that –”

“Courting,” Jay says, in a last ditch attempt at sanity. He shudders as Samiel leans forwards and presses a palm, warm and heavy, against his cock. “You said there had to be...” He chokes on the rest of his words as Samiel strokes him once, slow and deliberate.

“Yes,” Samiel says, “or no?”

“ _Yes_.”

The noise Samiel makes at that is filthily triumphant; the way he lights up at Jay's capitulation even more so.

He crawls down further, stripping Jay ruthlessly of his boots and flinging them away. They land with deep thuds against the carpet somewhere. Jay just has time to open his mouth to protest, when Samiel sets to work on his trousers.

“Wait,” Jay says, batting Samiel's fingers away as he struggles with the catches. “Wait.” He ignores the sound of pure frustration Samiel lets loose, and tries to divest himself of his remaining clothing.

But Samiel is there, and Samiel is not patient.

Buttons go flying, and Jay watches, open-mouthed, as his trousers go sailing off to land on a lampshade on the opposite side of the room. “That was – ” he begins, set on protest, and is immediately muffled as Samiel wrestles his top over his head.

“There,” Samiel croons, as Jay falls back against the carpet, disgruntled and aroused, and a little bit in love. “Isn't that better?” His expression indicates he certainly thinks so.

He looms over Jay, hands propped on either side of Jay's head and smiles, victorious. “Mine,” he says.

Jay shuts his eyes against the sight of him, head spinning. Samiel's words, his voice, they're all still pouring through his head like the best of promises. The look of him, dishevelled and delighted, is everything Jay had never expected. It is completely unbearable.

“Samiel,” he says.

“Look at you,” Samiel says, his voice nearer. His breath is warm on the bare skin of Jay's shoulder. He presses a kiss there, lingering on the surgery scar that hasn't quite faded yet. “You're perfect. Gods, you're perfect.” He places another kiss on Jay's breastbone; bites a mark over the place where Jay's heart is beating wildly in his chest, and continues down.

Jay opens his eyes, watching as Samiel slides the length of his body, then has to look at the ceiling. He can't think. Can't even reason like this. The sight of Samiel poised over him, eyes glittering, expression dangerously possessive, is enough to send a man mad.

“Darling,” Samiel says, a soft exhalation, and Jay's hips give a small, reflexive thrust at the feel of Samiel's breath against his cock. “Jason, look at me.”

The moment Jay does, Samiel grins and sinks his mouth down on Jay's cock.

The shock of warm, wet heat has Jay opening his mouth on a strangled gasp for air. He thrusts up once and feels Samiel suck hard, his lips sliding down Jay's length until he can't take any more. The pressure of it is exquisite; painfully pleasurably in the cruellest possible way. 

Samiel slides his mouth up and down him once, twice, more. He pulls back, just as Jay is beginning to rock his hips in a slow, mindless rhythm, reaching down to tangle his fingers in Samiel's hair.

Jay whines, high and breathless, trembling on the brink of begging.

Samiel doesn't blink; doesn't break his gaze from Jay. He licks his lips, chasing traces of Jay with his tongue, and Jay moans at the sight of it. Samiel's every movement seems designed to provoke another reaction, another moment of sensory overload. 

He smiles at the noise Jay makes. “Do you want to come like this?” he asks, trailing long, clever fingers down the length of Jay's shaft. He licks soft and delicate over the tip, and smiles again at the way Jay pants.

“Samiel,” Jay says, because it is the only word left in his head.

“Or,” Samiel says, “do you want me to fuck you?”

The offer, made in that voice, has heat burning in Jay's gut. He is not usually so keen on the idea – is perfectly content with partners, even if there are just lips, and hands and tongues involved. But the thought of Samiel, over him, in him, is enough to have him reaching out.

“Please,” he says.

“Oh,” Samiel says, and the odd, winded quality to his tone has Jay struggling to clear his mind; to work out what is wrong. “Oh, I didn't think you'd actually – ” 

“You started it,” Jay says. He drops his head back against the carpet. “You get to finish it.”

The noise Samiel makes is indescribable; hungry. “This is what I wanted,” he says, the symphony of his voice made of voracious needs and warmly held longing. “But you, I didn't expect you.” He smooths a palm down the length of Jay's thigh, possessive. “I never expect you.”

“For the record,” Jay manages, trying not to crawl out of his own skin at the way Samiel's fingertips graze his inner thigh, the sensitive place behind his knee, “this is really not how I anticipated my afternoon going either.”

“Try your life,” Samiel says, darkly amused. He presses a kiss to Jay's ribs, sloppy and uncoordinated, and then pulls back. “Do you know how long I've waited for you?”

Jay doesn't answer, just throws an arm across his eyes and hides behind the darkness. The thought of Samiel wanting this, waiting for this, is strangely arousing. 

He feels Samiel pull away; hears him scramble to his feet and pad across the room. There is the rustle of robes, the soft click of a cap. Then Samiel returns, hand warm on Jay's stomach.

“Are you going to look at me?” he asks.

Jay does and then has to bite his lip, so he doesn't make a fool of himself by saying something trite. Samiel has stripped. The long lines of his body are on display. He is sleek muscles and golden skin; as lovely as a statue. As strong as iron.

“Jason,” he says, on an inhalation. It is a prayer, an exhortation.

“Alright,” Jay says. He reaches up, cradles the back of Samiel's head and pulls gently until he can kiss him again. 

This time it is better. So much better. Samiel is warm, an intoxicating slide of skin against skin as he settles, heavy, against Jay. They are both panting at the sensation; at the way Samiel shivers when Jay nips at his lip. 

Samiel breaks away with a gasp. “Now,” he says, breathless. “Please, now.” His hips are moving fretfully against Jay's, precome easing the slide of their cocks against one another.

He doesn't wait for Jay to answer. Instead he moves, one hand reaching to pull Jay's leg around his waist. They both groan at the angle, better, more pressure, but it's not enough.

“Wait,” Jay says. “Wait.” He unwinds his leg from around Samiel's waist and shoves. Samiel tumbles backwards, surprised, and Jay crawls over him, settling across his hips. “Like this,” he says, and watches the flare of triumph spark in Samiel's eyes again. “Like this. I want to see you.”

Samiel growls. He rears up and sinks his teeth into the hollow of Jay's neck. He laps the skin there and presses bruising kisses in a line across Jay's collarbone.

Jay grips a handful of curls and tugs him away, pulling his head back until the long line of his throat is bared. “Now,” he says, and watches Samiel's lips part in pleasurable pain. He lets go and grips Samiel's chin in his fingers instead.

Samiel's hand scrabbles for a moment, and Jay hears the distinctive click of a cap being opened again. The soft sound of Samiel slicking his fingers is painfully loud above their breathing. 

Jay doesn't look away though, doesn't break that contact. Samiel is watching him, wide-eyed and feverish, as though he is the only thing left in the universe. It is intoxicating. Then, the first slide of Samiel's fingers, careful down his spine until they dip into the crack of his arse, is even more so.

Jay pushes back a little, as Samiel rubs the tip of one finger over his hole, slow and careful. “I won't break,” he says, hoarse, and grins as Samiel retaliates by pushing in, just a little.

“You're so – ” Samiel says, and his finger sliders deeper, causing Jay to shiver at the feeling. “You're just – ” he is dazed, trembling; caught between the grip Jay has on his chin, and the way he seems unable to help himself from pressing closer. 

He crooks his finger, tugging, until Jay is biting back a moan. “More,” he says. “Samiel, more. Give me another.”

Samiel does, obliging and sweet and utterly filthy, as he watches Jay's expression. The burn of two fingers stretching him has Jay shivering; has him dropping his hand to fist it in the carpet. The feel of Samiel's clever fingers, sliding up into him with greedy desperation, is enough to have him canting his hips.

Jay is still hard. The sting of Samiel stretching him open is a pleasurable pain; a deep, satisfying ache. He rocks forwards, sliding his cock along the cut of Samiel's hip, smearing his skin with precome.

“I think,” he says. “I think – ” 

“You're ready,” Samiel says to him, voice singing with desperation and awe. “Aren't you? You're begging for it, sweetheart, you're – ” He chokes off with a moan, low and guttural. 

Jay's hand scrabbles along the carpet for a moment, frantic. His fingertips encounter the bottle Samiel was using earlier. He pops the cap, slicking his own fingers, and rolls his hips down as Samiel continues to work him open.

“Wait,” he says, struggling to breathe around the pleasure. “I want to – ” He shifts backwards, feeling Samiel's fingers slide out of him. He is empty, aching, as he clenches around nothing. He gets a hand around Samiel's cock, ignoring the way Samiel's hips twitch up in response, and pumps him once, twice.

Samiel keens. “If you don't – ” he begins, as Jay knees his way forwards again. He breaks off, as Jay grips him firmly in one hand and sinks down onto him.

The slow, inexorable slide of Samiel into him, stretching him open, has Jay shuddering at the feeling. His skin feels too tight and he breathes in, trying to accommodate the sense of fullness, of deep satisfaction.

Under him, in him, Samiel is still. His eyes are wide. The look on his face is strangely devastated, as his fingers bite bruises into Jay's sides.

He is not quite ready, not quite used to the feeling, but Jay can't help but move. He rises up again, feeling Samiel's cock drag along his insides, and then drops down. The punched-out sound Samiel makes is music to his ears, and so Jay does it again.

“Jason,” Samiel manages. “Jason.” Reflexively, as Jay moves again, his hips thrust up, chasing Jay's warmth. 

Jay gasps at the sudden breach of Samiel's cock, faster and unexpected. He pants out a laugh, euphoric at the feeling, and feels Samiel rock up into him again. He goes deeper, this time, and Jay palms his own cock at the sensation of it, gripping himself in still-slick fingers as he begins to move faster.

Samiel lunges up as Jay sinks down onto him, still gripping Jay's hips. He bites at Jay's neck, the swoop of his collarbone. “Knew you'd be perfect,” he says, as they fuck. “Sweetheart, darling, _mio ades_.”

“Harder,” Jay says, pushing up into his own hand; fucking back onto Samiel. He is caught, trapped in Samiel's grasp and bound up in the way he buries himself, relentless, in Jay. He can feel feel orgasm building; can feel the way Samiel shifts, changing the angle of his thrusts until he is driving against Jay's prostate.

“You think this is all I want from you,” Samiel rasps, pressing kisses anywhere he can reach. His voice is a melody of anger, of possession, and underneath it all, of deep desire. “You think I called you here, I stole you away from your precious Air Force, just to fuck you?” He pants into the breadth of Jay's shoulder; licks rough over the mark he has left there.

Their movements are frenzied now. Jay tries to swallow down the moan he can feel building at the back of his throat, as Samiel slips a hand between them, tangles his fingers with Jay's where they are gripping his cock and squeezes, just the right side of demanding.

“I'm going to show you,” he promises, and Jay, half out of his mind with the need to come, simply nods. Samiel sounds dazed, wrecked. He is fucking into Jay as though if he tries hard enough, he can bury himself so deeply in Jay's mind, his soul, that nothing will prise them apart.

“Alright,” Jay pants, toes curling, wavering on the precipice of orgasm. “Alright, yes, show me.”

“I'm going to put you on a throne,” Samiel purrs, mindlessly sincere. The movement of his hand, his hips, is relentless. “I had to wait until the time was right and it is now, _mio ades_ , it is. I'm going to crown you and keep you, and darling we're going to make an empire out of our enemies. You'll like that, sweetheart. I'm going to let you loose on the universe, now I'm yours.” He leans up and kisses Jay, sloppy and desperate. 

“You're going to rule everything,” he says, into Jay's mouth. He thrusts up as Jay rocks down hard onto him, spread wide.

It is enough. Orgasm crashes through Jay. He is tense with pleasure, painting their entwined fingers with come as he gasps, frantic, against Samiel. His hips stutter, breaking the rhythm they have both been building to, and he tightens around Samiel's cock, shaking and somehow still desperate for more.

He feels Samiel shudder; feels him sink teeth into the join of Jay's shoulder as he ruts up frantically once, twice, through the aftershocks of Jay's orgasm. The raw sound he makes as he comes has Jay rolling his hips, trying to take him deeper in spite of himself.

As they slow, spent, Jay can feel himself, sloppy with come and deeply satisfied. His leg is aching where it is still healing, but he feels languorous. 

Samiel slumps back against the floor, flushed and breathing hard. He grins up at Jay, one hand lazily tracing patterns into the skin of Jay's hip. “Do you understand now?” he manages. He looks so pleased with himself that Jay can't help but laugh, breathless.

“Not even remotely,” he says, shifting gently. 

Samiel is still hard inside of him, and Jay feels pleasantly sore. But for the moment he is not inclined to do anything, the aftershocks of orgasm still sparking through him. He reaches down, pushing a sweat-dampened curls off of Samiel's forehead, and follows the curve of one brow with his fingertip. “But I'm sure you're going to explain it to me.”

“In great detail,” Samiel promises. He wrinkles his nose. “After we get off the carpet.”

“That was your fault,” Jay says. 

He hisses a little as he moves, shifting until Samiel is sliding out of him. He wavers for a moment, but manages to get his knees under himself, then stumbles to his feet.

Samiel follows him. “There's a bed,” he points out. “It's in the next room.”

Jay staggers slightly, loose-limbed and uncoordinated. “You could have mentioned this before.” He can feel the way Samiel is watching him, interested, as he trails him into the bedroom. 

“I had more important things to worry about,” Samiel says. He waits until Jay has flopped down face-first into the softness of the bedsheets, then crawls in after him. “Besides, I'd been waiting long enough for you. I wasn't going to wait even longer.”

“You keep saying that.” Jay's breath hitches as Samiel slides an arm around his shoulders, tugging him until he has rolled onto his side. “Hird explained about meshala, and...this. But, waiting? How did you know you were waiting for me?” 

“I just did,” Samiel says. He traces two fingers the length of Jay's spine, then slides them down further. He makes a deep sound of approval at the way there is no resistance, when he slips them into Jay's hole.

Jay hisses a little, slightly sore and overstimulated. He can feel the first unexpected pangs of arousal pooling low in his groin again though, as Samiel purrs. The sound is warm; delicate at his back. The slow thrust in of Samiel's fingers has him biting his lip.

“I don't know if I – ” 

“I bet you can,” Samiel says against his ear. He twists his fingers a little. “You're so wet,” he says, delighted. “So open.”

“Your fault,” Jay says. He can feel himself beginning to harden again, slowly. The slight burn of Samiel's fingers nothing compared to the start of pleasure he can feel creeping in. He pushes back a little. 

“My fault,” Samiel echoes, sounding absolutely undone by it. He draws his fingers out and palms the back of Jay's thigh, pushing until Jay moves his leg up. He shifts, and the head of his cock catches on the rim of Jay's hole.

Jay reaches back blindly, fisting his hand in Samiel's curls and tugging him forwards. “Slowly,” he says.

Samiel obeys. The tip of his cock breaches Jay as he rocks gently, slipping deeper in increments. It is a torturous, wicked tease, that has Jay relinquishing his grip on Samiel to clutch at the sheets.

Finally, Samiel is all the way in, his hips pressed tightly against Jay. He hooks his chin over Jay's shoulder, the both of them moving together, and slides a careful hand down, cradling Jay's balls. He cups them gently, pressing an open-mouthed kiss against the line of Jay's jaw. Jay sighs at the sensation, as Samiel trails his fingertips up, to smooth over the head of his cock.

“I think,” Jay says, and is amazed he can speak at all, “you can move a bit faster.”

Samiel doesn't reply, but the way his hips roll is enough. 

Jay inhales sharply at the movement. He is pinned, a little; not technically helpless in Samiel's grasp, but not in a real position to fight back, if he wanted to. 

But he doesn't need to. Pleasure spirals as Samiel thrusts deeper, their limbs sliding on the mattress with the force of it. The deep, sweet burn of Samiel moving in him is easier, after the stretch of last time. The rolling satisfaction he can feel building again, slower, is a delightful promise.

He hadn't anticipated this, he thinks as Samiel fucks gently into him. He'd wanted to collapse on the mattress and sleep for a year. But oh, he's so glad he didn't.

“Jason,” Samiel rasps in his ear, his voice seeping into Jay, making him rock back harder. “Jason.” He pumps his hand up and down Jay's cock slowly, drawing a strangled noise from him.

“Samiel,” Jay says, “please.”

Time stretches, slow and precious, until all Jay can think of is Samiel moving over him, in him. All he can hear is the pair of them, breathing in the silence of the room; the soft, minute shifts as they rock together. This is not like last time. Instead it is some slow, lovely thing that consumes them both.

Samiel comes first, tipping over the edge with a bitten-off gasp. Jay can feel him, the way the slow rhythm of his hips falters, his cock twitching. He buries himself deep in Jay and stills, shuddering.

Jay slides a hand down, close to coming and intent on finishing himself off.

Samiel growls gently, knocking his hand away. He pumps Jay once, twice and pushes himself closer still, as though he can keep his softening cock in Jay's body through willpower alone.

It is enough, and Jay slides over the edge into orgasm. Samiel's fingers coax him into mindless pleasure until he is wrung out, overstimulated and gasping.

“Oh,” he says, unsure which one of them is trembling more in the aftermath. “That's – ” Mindlessly he prises Samiel's hand away from him, as pleasure begins to transmute into sensitivity. He links their fingers together.

“Jason,” Samiel says. He buries his face in the nape of Jay's neck, breath warm against Jay's skin. “Jason.” He mouths kisses lazily, mindlessly, along the edge of Jay's shoulder, as he shifts his hips.

Jay licks his lips, shivering as Samiel's cock slips out of him with the movement. He can feel himself, wet and loose, the slickness of Samiel's come in him.

He shuts his eyes and tries to breathe.

“Samiel,” he says. 

There are no other words right now.

*

Jay is uncomfortably aware of the utterly shambolic sight he presents.

He is late to the talks. So late, in fact, that it is practically an insult to all those gathered. 

The reason for this lateness is largely because Samiel had been wrapped around him when he woke up. This had led to Jay's absolute distraction, and the very real problem of neither of them bothering to check the time. 

Because of this – and because there was no way in the seven circles of hell that Jay was doing the walk of shame back to his own rooms – he is currently wearing borrowed clothes. Unfortunately, Samiel's shirt is too tight across the shoulders, and too long in the body. It is black, composed of elaborately soft material, and with the most open neck that Jay has ever had the misfortune to encounter.

The room is quiet as Jay takes his seat. He tries not to notice the number of eyes staring at him.

“Good of you to join us,” Lault says, into the silence. His gaze flickers once to the necklace of bruises decorating Jay's throat. “I trust you had a productive morning, Wing Commander Lane?”

Across the table Hird chokes, clapping a hand over her mouth as she visibly tries to hold in her sniggers.

“Extremely,” Jay says. “Thank you.” He deliberately refuses to make eye contact with Samiel, who is lounging in his seat, looking extremely pleased with himself.

And that had at least been some blessing, Jay comforts himself. He had convinced Samiel that the pair of them showing up together would not have been appropriate. He is almost entirely certain though, that Samiel had picked out the blasted shirt as a means for petty revenge.

“Diplomatic negotiations are tiring,” Lord Athannus says. His tone is utterly expressionless. “I imagine Wing Commander Lane overslept.”

Hird, Jay notes, has dropped her head down onto the desk. Her shoulders are shaking.

He clears his throat. “I did, yes.”

“Then may we begin?” the Queen asks, her voice cutting through the moment, as cool and clear as glass.

There is a hasty reshuffling of chairs and the rustling of robes, and the talks pick up from where they had been left the previous day.

Watching the dynamics around the table, Jay is struck by how each and every member of the Lenian delegation is working towards their own ends. None of them appear to agree on much of anything. Where he had expected a unified front, there seems to be a vast range of opinion. Notably, however, Deneira does not interact much with her diplomats – apparently content to let them fight amongst themselves – and Samiel follows suit.

Renea Ters is one such suitably vocal diplomat. “It is perfectly clear,” she is saying, “that the human proposal to integrate Elysium fully into the trans-galactic trade route, would be a deliberate attempt to enforce diplomatic recognition on an illegal colony.”

“That is simply not true,” Lault protests. “Irrespective of Lenia's stance, Elysium is already recognised as a human colony – ” 

“Only by humanity,” Ters interrupts. “You ask too much in expecting Lenia to formally recognise Elysium.” She puts a hand on the table, palm flat. “Once you place it into the same political, taxable and legal sphere as other designated colonies within the Interior Circle, you have achieved its legality.”

Something about the way she says this; in the way her hand twitches slightly, sparks something in Jay's hindbrain.

Ters is not wrong. Lenia will not recognise Elysium if it can possibly help it. But, he thinks, there is something more to her insistence.

Political. Taxable. Legal.

Taxable.

_Got you_ , he thinks.

“What if we changed the proposal?” he asks, interrupting Ters mid-flow.

The silence following his question is profound. Even Hird, who has been looking increasingly bored by the second, is staring at him.

Ters clears her throat. “I beg your pardon?”

“What if we changed the proposal?” Jay repeats. He ignores the glare Lault is levelling at him and leans forwards. “Elysium currently acts as a port of sorts. It's an open secret. Most of the 'independently traded' goods come through there.” He smiles, blandly, as Ters swallows. “I am sure your family has dealt with Elysium in the past, Lady Ters.”

“That is not – ” 

“Instead of ensuring Elysium is integrated into the trans-galactic trade route, why don't we use this opportunity to declare it a joint protectorate?” 

He looks around, waiting for protests. Deneira is watching, blank faced. Lault's head is tilted, reluctantly interested. Athannus has leant forwards – the first sign today that he's actually paying attention – and Samiel...

Samiel is staring at Jay, wide-eyed and fascinated.

“You're suggesting,” Ters says faintly, “that each party relinquishes its claim on Elysium and uses it as...as...”

Jay smiles. “A tax haven for imported goods? Yes. I am.” He spreads his hands for emphasis. “Both parties would have a vested interest in keeping the colony safe. Elysium could remain semi-autonomous, but we could come to a mutual agreement on the number of settlers and military safeguards.”

“It could work,” Ters says. Her eyes dart towards Deneira, then at Samiel. “It could – ” 

“It would need ratifying by Parliament,” Lault says. He gives a half shrug as Jay looks at him. “Which is not to say it won't be.” The smile he shoots Jay is approving. “An elegant solution, Wing Commander.”

“And your Parliament would agree?” They all look at Deneira. She is calm, no hint as to what she is thinking crosses her face. “To do this would mean acknowledging that Lenia may have some claim on Elysium.”

“Alternatively, it recognises Elysium as an independent colony, composed of two races,” Jay says. “It could surely be used as an example of our new friendship? A demonstration to the rest of the galaxy of how far we have come?”

Something flickers across Deneira's face then – there and gone so fast it is impossible to read. Jay, cynically, thinks it looks almost like annoyance. “Perhaps,” is all she says.

“I'll put the proposal to our representatives within the Galactic Parliament,” Lault says. “Once we have ironed out a few details, of course.”

“Please do,” Ters says. She sounds almost excited. “I would be more than willing to work with Wing Commander Lane on this solution.”

There is the sharp scrape of a chair across marble as Samiel stands, abruptly. “I need to speak to Wing Commander Lane. Privately.”

Jay stares. “Now?”

“Yes,” Samiel says curtly. “Now.”

Jay glances at Lault, who inclines his head. “If it pleases the Decime.”

“It does.” One hand, hard and implacable, closes on Jay's arm as he stands. Jay nearly stumbles, as Samiel tows him towards the door.

“Please,” he hears Ters say, as Samiel wrestles Jay into the corridor. “Let us discuss the possibility of opening this new protectorate up on the trans-galactic trade route.”

The door shuts behind them.

“What – ” Jay begins, annoyed, and Samiel slams him against the wall.

“Do you have any idea,” he says, “what that did to me?”

His voice is a low rumble; slow and no doubt filled with harmonies that Jay can't hear right now, thanks to his translator. He doesn't need them though, to work out that Samiel is not annoyed. He's delighted.

“You took me out of the talks – ” he says, irritated, and Samiel kisses him.

Jay lets it happen, even though he is achingly aware of ten of the most important diplomats in the galaxy, sitting one wall away from them. Samiel's mouth is hard and demanding against his own. He pushes into Jay, slotting against the cradle of his hips as he hums, pleased.

When Samiel pulls back his lips are slick and gleaming in the low light of the corridor. Jay can't help himself: he reaches out, running the pad of his thumb across them, just to feel their softness.

“I was right,” Samiel rasps. “I was absolutely right. You're going to be magnificent.” The tip of his tongue brushes Jay's thumb. Jay shivers at the feel of it.

“I think you're getting ahead of yourself,” he says. “I haven't said yes to any of your proposals yet, and we're in the early stages of delicate negotiations here. Which means I should be in that room, not out here with you.”

The smile Samiel gives him is wide; uninhibited in spite of where they are. “You said 'yet'.”

Jay groans, exasperated, dropping his head back. It hits the wall with a thud. “Your hearing is so selective it's practically a talent.”

“Yet,” Samiel repeats happily, and kisses him again.

*

Where before Jay had been given time to breathe, to acclimatise to Lenia, now he suddenly finds himself in demand.

If it is not Lault asking him to attend further meetings, it is Ters ambushing him in the corridor to discuss the latest round of negotiations on Elysium. Hird has taken to trailing after him like a particularly aggressive guard dog, and even Athannus has stopped by from time to time to seek out his opinion on various diplomatic obstacles.

And through all of this, there is Samiel.

There are odd little gifts, left in random places for Jay to find. There are fleeting touches and long, leisurely kisses. Samiel wants to discuss anything and everything – share with Jay his deepest thoughts and most idle speculations – and ask Jay's opinion on whatever catches his attention.

“It's because I want to know,” he says, when Jay asks. He is sitting on the floor of his rooms, fiddling with the core stabiliser off of an old TX-shuttle. There is engine grease smeared across his nose, from where he had rubbed it absent-mindedly earlier.

Jay is trying hard not to find it endearing.

“Why?”

Samiel shrugs. “Because I'd like to know how your mind works, and because I want to know what you're thinking.” He smile, impishly. “And whether you're thinking of me.”

“Sometimes,” Jay tells him, just to see the way his expression softens.

Samiel puts down the core stabiliser and shuffles the couple of feet across the rug on his knees, to where Jay is sitting, legs stretched in front of him. “How often?”

“Oh, now and then.”

“ _Jason_.”

“Alright you narcissist.” Jay tugs one of Samiel's curls, smiling at the petulant expression on his face. “More often than I should be. You are terribly distracting.” He gentles his fingers. 

“I love the way you think,” Samiel confesses in a hushed whisper, leaning into Jay's touch. “That's why I ask, really. You see so much and you store it all up, until you can unleash it at the most devastating opportunity. I don't think you even realise you're doing it.”

“I think you're reading too much into it.”

“Mm, no.” Samiel flops over onto his side, resting his head in Jay's lap. Apparently, Jay thinks wryly, it has become one of his favourite ways to sit.

“Well, we'll have to agree to disagree.”

“Ah,” Samiel says, “there's the diplomat in you.” He grins up at Jay, wrinkling his nose. “You're using your talents on me now.”

“Only because you deserve it,” Jay says. He rubs the bridge of Samiel's nose with a finger, wiping away the engine grease. 

They sit for a while, Samiel apparently slipping gently towards dozing, if the way he can't quite keep his eyes open is any indication.

Jay watches him, fascinated. Here, the most powerful man on Lenia is melting under his fingers, vulnerable and trusting. It makes something odd stir in his chest, as he traces the sweep of Samiel's brows, the line of his jaw.

He only realises he is humming when Samiel's eyes flutter open to look at him.

“What is that?”

Jay thinks for a moment, then can't help the small huff of amusement that escapes him when he realises. “A folk song,” he says. “I learnt it a long time ago.”

“What's it about?”

“The White Widow of Egea,” Jay says. “And the siren she fell in love with.”

Samiel smiles sleepily. “I think even your ancestors knew the dangers of falling in love with Sirens.”

“Well, I do think it was meant as a warning.”

“What happened to them? The widow and her lover?”

“The siren sang her lover into the sea, of course. The widow was never seen again.”

“Ah.” Samiel settles again, shutting his eyes. “Well there's the truth, then. It's not a warning: it's a love story. The siren didn't kill her lover – she stole her away from her people and kept her.”

“Are you still talking about the widow?” Jay asks dryly.

“That's the moral of the story,” Samiel says, instead of answering. “We're possessive creatures, when we find our heartsongs.” He reaches up, patting blindly until Jay links their fingers together. “And you should know not to sing to Sirens,” he adds, on the edge of sleep.

“Why's that?” Jay says, amused.

“Because we'll sing back. And when we do, you'll never want to leave us.” There is a promise in his voice, honest and clear. “Don't sing unless you mean it.”

“Well then,” Jay says, and nothing more. He keeps hold of Samiel's hand and watches him breathe.

And thinks.

*

Change is slow to happen, but six months in the talks have finally been concluded and Jay can start to relax.

“What will you do now?” Hird asks, as they both loiter inconspicuously at the edge of a crowd of courtiers. “You haven't formally resigned, Lane. Technically the Air Force still owns your arse.”

Jay shrugs. “I don't want to resign.”

“You think,” Hird says slowly, “that he is going to let you leave?”

They both look at Samiel, standing next to Deneira. His expression is blank, serene, as he regards the gathering court. His tunic is a deep midnight blue, shot through with delicate embroidery. The gold paint on his lips, curling down his temples, is painted in careful mimicry of the patterns on a mask. For one moment as Jay stares at him, he is unaccountably alien.

_I've touched that skin_ , Jay thinks, remembering the warmth of Samiel beneath his fingertips. _I've kissed those lips_. Hard to imagine right now.

“I think we'd have a sensible discussion,” he says to Hird, tearing his gaze away.

She sips her drink. “No, you wouldn't. There'd be a lot of shouting and then he'd crawl after you and beg, until you gave in.”

Jay shoots her a look. “You think he tells me what to do? Blackmails me?”

“Oh no.” She pulls a face. “I think you tell him what to fucking do. I've watched that man. If you told him to fling himself out of the nearest airlock, he'd only pause to check which airlock you meant.”

“Thank you Hird, very reassuring.”

“Well ask a stupid fucking question,” she says, “and that's what you get.”

Jay rubs a hand across his face. “I don't know what I want to do,” he admits. “Hird, this is ridiculous. I've know this man six months, and I'm considering chucking in everything to do – what, exactly?”

“I don't know. That's a conversation you'd have to have with him. I'm not your fucking agony aunt.” She raises an eyebrow at the look on his face. “Fuck off, Lane. I'm not. If you want sympathy, talk to someone else.”

“Well what did you do?” Jay asks. “Why did you decide to carry on doing your job?”

“Because I love what I do,” she says bluntly. “And there was never any question of me stopping.”

“But didn't – ” 

“No he fucking didn't, because he loves what he does, too.” Involuntarily her gaze seems to stray towards Venndred, who is talking animatedly to Lault in another corner of the room. “We work that way,” she adds.

“Alright,” Jay says. 

“But you're different,” Hird says. “So's he.” She tilts her head in Samiel's direction. “What works for me might not for you. So, think about what you can live with, and think about what you can live without.”

For Hird, Jay reflects, this is surprisingly sage advice. “Thank you,” he says, and means it.

She pulls a face.”Don't fucking thank me, just make sure you do the right thing.” She nudges him. “And don't bring me into any fucking debates you two may have about this.”

Jay hides a grin behind his own glass, taking a hasty gulp of his Lormenian whiskey. “Wouldn't dream of it.”

They are chatting amiably with Ters sometime later, when Jay becomes aware of a slowly blossoming silence on the other side of the room. 

Hird apparently notices it at the same time, because she touches Ters' shoulder, halting her in mid flow. “What's happening over there?”

Ters looks. “Oh,” she says.

Samiel is standing at the bottom of the steps leading to the throne. Above him, Deneira is sitting, observing the goings on with her usual serenity. In the rapidly-widening circle of empty space around Samiel, there is one other Siren standing with his chin tilted up.

“Amias Stradios,” Ters murmurs under her breath to Hird. “Only minor, no one serious. Rather a loud voice in Parliamentary debates. None of his family sit on the Council, no matter how much they'd like to.”

The silence has reached the far side of the room now, Jay notes uncomfortably. Whatever Stradios has said, Samiel has not responded.

“What's –” Hird begins.

“I would like you,” Samiel says, clear as a bell, “to repeat what you have just said.” His voice rings through the crowds of people. Courtiers, sensing the potential for drama, are shifting carefully, jockeying for the best view whilst trying to draw the least amount of attention to themselves.

Hird and Jay exchange looks. She jerks her head at him. With mounting trepidation, Jay steps around a small cluster of people to keep Samiel in view.

“I said no one will follow a Decime tied by his cock to a ground crawler,” Stradios says, loudly.

The shock at his statement ripples through the gathering in a rustle of clothing and half-murmured exchanges. Jay feels, more than sees, those Sirens closest to him edging away, not willing to be drawn into the little drama.

“Oh bloody hell,” Hird mutters at Jay's elbow. “Is he fucking suicidal?”

“He's saying what quite a few people are thinking,” Ters says softly. “It's just nobody else is stupid enough to say it to the Decime's face.”

“Do you think it?”

“No.” She tilts her head as Hird looks at her. “I've worked with both of you. I am well aware of the merits you possess.”

As Jay watches, Samiel takes two steps towards Stradios. His pace is slow, measured. There is none of the anger Jay had half-expected to see on his face.

“You have objections?” he asks.

“I do.” Stradios is defiant; his voice tempered in spite of his words. “We have made peace with an enemy we have long fought. We have relinquished our total claim on a land that was stolen from us. We are celebrating a false friendship and opening ourselves up to inevitable betrayal at a later date. All because you are supporting the human cause, against the interests of your own people. And we all know why.”

As Stradios speaks, to Jay's ear it sounds like something he has memorised by rote. It may be his own objections, but the cadence of it, the deliverance, has someone else's voice behind it. He looks at Deneira, unmoving on her throne, and wonders.

“You question my loyalty to Lenia?” Samiel says softly. “When I want nothing but the best for my people?” He watches Stradios, dangerously calm.

“Prove it,” Stradios says. “Rid yourself of – ” 

Samiel's hand shoots out faster than Jay can see. There is the horrible, dry crack of bone breaking, and Stradios stumbles backwards, clutching one hand. His lips move, soundless, as he breathes harshly.

“You've attacked – ” he begins, voice hoarse with the effort it must be costing him to hold back a scream.

“I attacked the man who asked me to relinquish my soul,” Samiel says. He takes another step forwards. This time, Stradios steps back. “Let me be clear: my loyalty is to Lenia. It always will be. But you are a fool if you think that anything will come between me and my heartsong.”

Stradios wheezes, cradling his hand. “That – ” 

Again, Samiel moves. This time, Jay has anticipated it. He watches the elegant way Samiel reaches out, faster than Stradios can dodge. He grips the man's already broken fingers and wrenches them back further.

Another snap.

This time, Stradios cannot quite contain his scream.

“Fucking hell,” Hird says under her breath.

“The next person,” Samiel says calmly over the noise, “to say such a thing, will not suffer the same fate. Instead, I will personally remove their tongue from their head.” He stares, unflinching, at the courtiers gaping at the scene. “And if that does not work, and I hear anyone else objecting to the presence of my soul in this court, I will be merciful and remove their head, so they do not have to think of him ever again.” 

He turns, ignoring Stradios, to look Deneira full in the face. “Do I make myself clear?”

Jay hears Ters' soft intake of breath and has to contain his own flinch. This public confrontation is not what he was expecting this afternoon. He wonders, briefly, how Deneira will contain Samiel now.

There is a long pause.

“You have heard the Decime,” Deneira says at last, her tone as neutral as ever. “Therefore there can be no protest if such punishment is meted out.”

She and Samiel stare at one another for a moment, before he nods. “Thank you, Most Exalted,” he says, with absolutely no evidence of sincerity. 

Behind him, Stradios stares. “But –” 

“Your tongue,” Samiel says coldly, without looking at him, “if you utter one more syllable.”

This, Jay realises, is Samiel unleashed. This is the kind of King he could be, if not properly tempered. Samiel is joyous and curious. He loves deeply and with utter loyalty. But he is also quick to anger, and has none of the diplomacy Jay would expect from someone reared in the political sphere. A by-product, perhaps, of a mother who has raised him to demand the universe.

Samiel is cunning, certainly, and undeniably clever. But he is also not necessarily thinking in terms of the future. To make such a public declaration now – to openly challenge Deneira – is something that may cost him, if he is not careful.

And then what? What happens if someone comes along who is just that slightest bit quicker? More cunning? 

Jay frowns, thinking. It goes back to what he had said to Samiel all those months ago: _You only have to be unlucky_. The other contenders have withdrawn, but that doesn't mean there won't be people lining up to have Samiel's head if he's not careful.

But worse still might be the loss of potential. There is the real possibility of Samiel, as a new and different King. A man raised by a Siren mother and her human husband. Someone who understands both sides of those political spheres; who could unify them. 

If Samiel can make the throne.

If.

And underneath all these concerns, is the deep and abiding certainty that Jay can't lose him. Not to this.

He watches the way Samiel moves, striding away from Deneira, back turned. Ahead of him courtiers part in waves, as he makes his way towards Jay. His head is held high, his expression serene.

He reaches Jay and holds out a hand.

And Jay realises he has made his choice.

*

“His Most Exalted Majesty, Emperor of the Outlying Circle, Commander of the – ”

“Yes alright,” Jay says irritably, from where he is sitting by the window, “I happen to know who he is, thank you.”

Ters – who in the last three years has worked her way up the political ladder with the kind of energetic enthusiasm Jay actively encourages – simply stares at him. The slight twitch of her lips gives her away. 

“Did you hear?” Samiel says from behind her. He bounds into the room, exhilarated. The bond between them hums with his energy. “We took the Dhanid outpost this morning.”

He hasn't, Jay notes, bothered to change. He is still in his uniform, ash streaked across his brow. As he cradles Jay's face in his hands and kisses him, Jay catches the sharp scent of ozone and salzon oil. And underneath it all, the familiar smell of Samiel.

“Yes,” he says when they part. “I heard. Imagine my surprise, when I am right in the middle of assuring the Drakia Ambassador that we have absolutely no intention of encroaching further into his territory, and you tell me that you have already gone ahead and done exactly that.”

“It was taking too long,” Samiel says. He flings himself into the chair opposite Jay, stretching his legs out. “Your way always does.”

“My way,” Jay says, annoyed and endeared all at once, “means that we don't have the Interior Circle Parliament coming down on us like a ton of bricks.”

“You'll sort it out,” Samiel says confidently, “you always do.”

Jay frowns. “As much as I love your optimism, if the Drakia decide they are going to petition Parliament, we are in for quite a few problems.”

“They won't. If they do that, then Parliament is going to start looking at why they were so upset about Dhanid in particular. Then they'll have to explain their 'merchandise'.” He uses the word with heavy sarcasm.

“Speaking of.” Jay raises an eyebrow. “How many this time?”

“Over a thousand,” Samiel says. “Children as well.” 

Behind them Ters hisses, disapproving. “Animals,” she says. It is the closest Jay has ever seen her get to swearing.

“Have we set up the standard protocols for them?” Jay asks her.

“Of course.” From her posture, she is vaguely insulted. “Rooms have been assigned and we have twenty medics on standby for any injuries. The field kitchens have been given extra supplies, and we will start processing paperwork immediately, so people can be rehoused. We can draft in extra shuttles if they wish to go elsewhere.”

“What would I do without you?” Jay says.

“Well, you'd have a lot more paperwork.”

“There,” Samiel says. “Are you happy now?” He is smiling at Jay, mischievous. “Not so irritating after all, is it?”

Jay sighs, getting up from the window seat. “I suppose it'll have to do,” he says, and bends to kiss Samiel.

Ters clears her throat. “If you'll excuse me, Most Exalteds?”

Samiel waves a hand lazily, and Jay smiles into the kiss as he hears the door click shut behind Ters. “Alright,” he says, drawing back and straightening. “I suppose your way does have some merit.”

“Thank you.” Samiel preens a little, and Jay can't help but laugh at the ridiculous posturing.

“You idiot,” he says fondly. “Next time at least give me a chance to conclude the talks, before you start murdering their soldiers? I might make a lovely hostage one day if you're not careful.”

“They wouldn't dare,” Samiel says. “Because if I got my hands on them, their last few moments would be so unendingly painful, they'd be begging for death.” There is something dangerous in his eyes; unfathomable violence at the thought. “And that would only be if you hadn't decimated them first yourself,” he adds, as an afterthought.

“Well, it's nice to know you at least still believe me capable of that,” Jay says dryly. “Thank you for your vote of confidence.”

“You're competent,” Samiel says. He fists his hand in the front of Jay's formal tunic and tugs, until Jay is bending over him again, their lips a hairsbreadth apart. “I never doubt that. Why do you think I let you deal with them all?”

“Because you have no patience when it comes to politics.”

“Well, yes. But also because you can get more out of them with a smile and an afternoon tea, than I can in three months on the front lines.” He grins. “And then if that doesn't work, you shoot them anyway.”

“Your endless fascination with me committing physical violence is starting to become concerning,” Jay says. He is not really complaining. “Is there something I should know?”

“Only that watching you decimate our enemies, in whatever capacity you choose, is a glorious sight,” Samiel says, his voice a purr. “Do you know how difficult it is not to sink to my knees in front of you, when you do that?”

“I'm pleased you've shown restraint so far,” Jay says. “I'm not sure your people could cope with any further displays of public affection.”

“Our people.”

“Alright, yes. Our people.”

Samiel leans up the last few inches and kisses him thoroughly. When he eventually releases Jay, they are both a little more flushed, and breathing rapidly. “There,” he says. “I'm glad we agree.”

“Is that what that was?” Jay says. “Agreement?”

The look Samiel gives him is so utterly innocent, it is bordering on parody. “I was just taking a page out of your book and using persuasion. Emphasising my point.”

“Oh, so when it suits you – ” Jay begins, and is cut off what Samiel reels him back in for another kiss.

If this is Samiel's level of diplomacy, Jay thinks, as he curls a hand around the nape of Samiel's neck and pulls him closer, then he can't complain too much.

Or at all, really.

*

When Jay is thirty three and living on Lenia, the remaining pockets of resistance in the Outlying Circle sue for peace.

They receive the delegation in the throne room. 

Jay sits, straight-backed, watching them approach. Next to him is Samiel, golden and beautiful and utterly terrifying. The delicate ornaments at his ears, his throat, only serve to highlight the severity of his expression; the strong lines of his body.

As the delegation kneels, obeisance written into every line of their bodies, Samiel takes Jay's hand.

“There,” he says leaning across to whisper softly. “I did promise you an empire.”

Jay presses a kiss to the back of his hand, fleeting and sincere, and enough to have the Lenians who are present looking uncomfortable. “You did,” he says.

“Well I hope you've got a plan for what comes next, sweetheart. It's your turn this time.”

Jay smiles.

“I've got a few ideas,” he says.

And that is where it begins.


	6. I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so the next chapter of _Icarus_ is coming, I promise. RL has been insanely busy, and changing jobs has not helped. In the middle of writing all the Samiel/Jay drama, however, Venndred came up and walloped me over the head. So I hope you enjoy 5,000 words of semi-coherent backstory! (In a slightly different style to my usual nonsense.)
> 
> Venndred/Hird, minor depictions of violence, a timeline that jumps. Title from 'The Old Astronomer to His Pupil' (Sarah Williams)

Stories are in his blood; they always have been.

When he is younger, his mother weaves him the tales of Belleros and Trias; of Lenias and Tisiphene. His father sings to him in the old language, of half-forgotten legends set in bygone ages; of battles and victories and unbearable loss. There is learning – lessons of what went wrong, of how to change the future by dreaming of the past – but some things he loves the best. 

_Learns_ the best.

“If you find the other half of your soul,” his mother hums, combing through his hair with her fingers as they sit together, “you hang onto it, my baby. You never let your soul walk away.”

“Is that what you and papa have?” he asks, innocent and wide-eyed and believing in love.

His mother smiles. “Oh no. No. We had a choice, and meshala is not that. There is no choice when it comes to who you belong to.”

Venndred frowns and tries to work this through in his mind. “But you love him.”

“Of course I do.”

“But he's not your soul mate.”

She cradles his face in her hands, still smiling, and presses a kiss to his brow. “There are many different kinds of love,” she says gently. “Meshala and logosykia are not for everyone. They are for the rare few; the blessed.”

“How do you settle for something less, then?” he asks, bewildered. “When you know your soul is out there mama, how do you decide not to find it?”

She laughs a little then, and taps the end of his nose. “My soul was always my own,” she says. “It takes a special kind of heart to always be spilt in two. It is a heavy burden, my darling.”

He can feel comprehension at the edges of his mind, and struggles to grasp it. “Like a curse?”

“No,” she says, “like a blessing.”

“Do I have it?” he asks then, puzzled and a little frightened. 

She hums; brushes his hair away from his forehead and cradles his chin in her hand. “Only you will know that.”

“How?”

“Meshala is a calling. A destiny. You won't feel complete without it.” She laughs at his frown. “If it is meant for you, it will happen when you need it most.”

“Well, when is that?”

“When you want to change the world,” his father says from behind them. His hand lands on his mother's shoulder, warm and comforting. She leans into it a little; presses her cheek to his knuckles and smiles wider when he drops a kiss to the top of her head.

“What if I don't want to change the world?”

His father ruffles his hair, then settles down next to them. “Everyone always changes the world, Venndred. It's just a question of scale.”

“I don't – ” 

“Think of it another way: the world could mean a planet, or a galaxy. It could mean a race of people, or a town.” He smiles at Venndred's confusion. “Or it could mean one person.”

“How is the world one person?”

“Well,” his mother says, and presses a swift kiss to his father's cheek. “Perhaps to one person you can be the world.”

*

He loves fairy tales.

He loves the myths of the Maa-Ilian cities; the stories long-documented in the Maa-Tarekian archives. He adores running his fingers over the lines of text, lovingly compiled in parchment and paper and on screens. Of breathing in the knowledge they share; the history.

These are the stories of his people, and he devours them as he grows.

Some nights he dreams, desperately, of all the things he wishes he could have.

He longs for adventure, for excitement. He wants to battle villains and win glory. His mind conjures up danger, adrenaline; the unspoken lessons of a thousand tales that mean the hero wins and receives their just reward.

On the best nights – the worst nights – he dreams of a Queen, violent and angry and honourable. A woman as relentless as the burning suns. He wants to sink to his knees; press ardent kisses into the scars on her knuckles and worship at her feet.

He thinks of gods and goddesses; of the way Lenia can learn from its past and look to the future.

He goes to the Naos, once, and stands spellbound in the Hall of Memories, under the watchful gaze of the High Priest.

Here, in the high-vaulted ceilings, he can understand the soft whisper of a million stories; a million souls carefully preserved. The tongues of a thousand dead Lenians, all waiting to have life breathed back into them as they speak their words out of pages, and stone, and recordings.

It makes his heart beat faster – the possibilities, the knowledge – as he stands here and inhales history.

_One day_ , he thinks to himself.

*

Myths are just that, he learns later, and legends don't speak the truth.

The older he grows, the more he understands these hard lessons.

He had wanted to see the universe, to breathe new skies and touch the stars. The easiest way to do that is to join the army.

But it changes him, in all the ways he didn't think it would. Where before he had dreamt of adventure, of excitement and distant worlds beneath his feet, now he is dragged down, screaming, into the mud and blood of open warfare.

He doesn't dream of honour any more. It doesn't exist.

“Of course it doesn't exist,” Chorantis says, when Venn tells him this. He rubs a hand across his eyes, smearing grime and filth across the bridge of his nose. He sighs wearily. Presumably, Venn thinks, at his idiocy. 

“I know,” Venn says sullenly, as they both stare across the wasteland of Attien towards the opposite side.

The humans have camped out along the banks of the Tenic. They scurry like ants, industrious as the Lenians watch them. They are small, Venn thinks, mindless and soft until you come in close. Then, they have teeth.

Chorantis grunts. “At least your idealism hasn't survived,” he says sourly. “Not much use for it, is there?”

Venn looks at the humans again; wonders if they are looking back.

He thinks of the twenty, thirty, forty battles before. Of the way blood can run over his fingers, sticky and hot against his skin. He thinks of all the things he has become, trying to find his way in a universe that simply doesn't care. Idealism has no place next to killing. There is no room for honour and chivalry next to the white heat of someone's last breath, running out over a salzon blade.

_Murderer_ , he accuses himself, and wonders where and when Venndred Liesen died in this war.

He looks at the humans, looks at Chorantis, and doesn't shut his eyes against the truth of the monster he is.

“No,” he says, hollowed out and scraped thin, “no use for idealism.”

*

He disassembles his gun.

Reassembles it.

Disassembles it.

Reassembles it.

A litany over and over. A prayer, of metal clicking together and the sharp bite of a bullet cracking into vulnerable flesh.

This is his story now, and no other.

When he's home on leave, he can't spare a thought for his mother's worried eyes or his father's voice. Can't think of the songs they sang him.

War is the tale he is telling, and it is what Lenia has been singing for so long now. He's only one man, he can't change her song. He's a member of the chorus, not a story weaver. Each note of sweet violence chips away another part of his soul. He will give his all to this, until it consumes him.

_Once there was a boy who believed in fairy tales_ , he thinks bitterly. _What a fool he was_.

There are no happy endings; no happy middles.

No legends here.

*

He could leave the army, he knows.

But what then? What use is there for a man now trained to kill? He has stood on the shores of the Beltic Oceans and fired until his fingers cramped. Until the only sounds left were the dead and the dying. He has sung humans to their graves without mercy, because it was kill or be killed.

He is not a hero. He is not anything.

So he learns to kill some more. He becomes good at it and tells himself the same tired facts: he is helping Lenia. He is stopping human expansion. Surely, at least, he can rationalise that he is doing evil for the sake of something good?

The lie is bitter and does not sit well on his tongue.

*

His hands are red.

His hands are red.

His hands are red.

*

He sleepwalks through two more years; earns his place on the battlefield and rises in the ranks. He's not a Severne – could be, if he wanted – but he's high enough now that he doesn't have to be on the front lines if he wishes.

“They're on the move again,” his Second is saying, doubled over holograms and markers, in the pit of a station they currently call a forward base. “Air support has now been called in, and – ” 

And there is a child standing there, ridiculously; open-mouthed as she stares at the Lenians in front of her.

“Tisiphene's tits,” Herea says, as Venn stares. “Where did she come from?”

The girl is human: barefoot and filthy in the desperate way children in war are. How she managed to walk halfway through the camp, with nobody stopping her, is a strange kind of miracle in itself. She is terrified and shaking, and for the first time in a very long while, something splinters in Venn's chest.

“How did – ” he manages; doesn't make it to a full sentence before the girl is lurching back three steps, on feet that are preparing to run.

“Aristea!” Herea roars, shouting for the head of security, and – 

“ _Wait!_ ” Venn says, something cracked open and horrified on his tongue, because this child is going to be shot, and he can't – he can't – 

“She could have seen everything!” Herea is bellowing – 

And – 

He flings out an arm to halt the gun pointed at the girl – the _child_ , Lenias have mercy, the _child_ – 

“Don't you dare!” he howls, and his voice could shatter steel; he can hear the harmonies of it shrieking even in his own ears – 

And – 

The child screams, high pitched and thin – 

And –

Venndred Liesen crashes to his knees in front of her.

“It's alright,” he says, shaking so hard, his back to the guns he knows are pointed at the pair of them. “It's alright, no one will hurt you. It's alright.”

“Sir!” Herea snarls, and is ignored.

“It's alright,” Venndred says again, reaching out with one hand. He watches as the child stares at him, paralysed with terror and indecision.

He doesn't know who he's lying to more.

*

He gets demoted for that.

Not a surprise.

Demoted for not killing a child.

But for the first time in a very long while, he is breathing. The burnt-out shell of his soul is sparking to life, with all the painful ache of a deadened limb. 

He lies on his back under the night sky of Attien, again, and dreams of stars.

When he wakes he finds he's crying.

He can remember the name of the hero Dhalia's favourite sword.

*

No man's land is filled with smoke and ash. The whole world is grey as he stumbles across it, searching out survivors, as strike ships scream overhead. He wonders if they'll hit him, or whether he'll have time to duck.

He comes across a human, three quarters gone, eyes glassy and droning as he stares at the sky. The noise he makes is high pitched, on the edge of a scream, if he only had enough breath left for it.

Venndred follows the line of his gaze up; wonders if he is trying to see beyond the haze of battle and death, to the stars above.

He has killed so many times before, he thinks, but not like this. Not as it should be done.

He sits; cradles the hand of his enemy and palms the knife from his boot. The man is insensible, spasming with agony and keening. The noise is not a song, not even close, but perhaps it is all that humans are capable of making. Perhaps they do not sing.

It occurs to Venndred that he has never wondered this, until now.

“I'm sorry,” he says softly; soothes a hand across the man's forehead, smearing sweat and grime as he does. He looks up again. “There are stars up there,” he says gently. “May your soul travel along the paths of their light, until you find your way home.”

It is a quick killing. A mercy killing.

There is honour in it.

The rightness of it settles in his bones. He watches life fade from the man's eyes, holding his hand. He will never not be a killer – killing is something you can never unlearn – but perhaps, sometimes, it can be a kindness. Perhaps there is a path forward that is not mindless violence.

He lays the human's hand carefully on the ground; wipes the blade of his knife on the hem of his robes and gets carefully to his feet.

A flicker of movement then, the rabbit-quick jerk of a creature hiding in its burrow to avoid his gaze.

It is the flame that catches his eye first – the hair that is a blaze of scarlet against the backdrop of death. It is something vital, burning through the darkness of Attien's atmosphere as he takes hurried steps forward. 

Here is something alive, not dying.

He stops a few feet from the woman lying on her front. She is playing dead with such ferocity that he almost wonders if she could tense up any further. Her spine is steel under her flight suit, her hand clenched around her pistol so tightly her knuckles are white.

He thinks of a different man; a different time.

He makes his choice.

“I won't harm you,” he says softly.

She ignores him, strung so tightly he can see the cords of muscles down her back; the way her breath stills in her body completely, as though she is bottling it up, choking her own life force down to preserve what she thinks will be her last seconds.

His heart lurches in his chest; a moment of thunder against his soul. 

Here, they are just two people in the middle of a war. She is not Lenian and he is not human, and they cannot understand each other in all the ways that matter. But they are both alive, and Venndred is not a man who is choosing to kill when he doesn't need to any more.

“I won't harm you,” he repeats again.

The woman moves.

She rolls over so rapidly he doesn't have time to blink; to breathe. Her arm swings up, and all he can see is her eyes above the sight of her pistol. They are the deepest violet, like the sky on the cusp of dawn, at the edge of the world.

_Tisiphene_ , he thinks, breathless.

_“Fuck off,”_ she snarls.

There is the crack of her gun. 

Three quick blasts of white-hot agony.

And then – 

Nothing.

*

He wakes in hospital two days later.

The list of injuries is short, but severe: a punctured lung, a shattered collarbone; three new white starbursts of scarring across his chest.

The loss of half his soul.

_Just small, everyday injuries_ , he thinks, and laughs to himself, dizzy with the promise of it.

*

Junea Three is beautiful – a temperate climate with lush, benign forests and open, rolling fields.

“Venn-dred,” Freya chants, smacking both his cheeks with her palms, in time to the rhythm of her own voice. “Venn-dred. Venn-dred. Venn-dred.”

He laughs, then chokes back the cough he can feel building at the too-sharp rush of air in his wounded lungs. He bounces her on his knee instead; lets her tug at the ends of his fringe – grown long with a lack of military precision – and blows a raspberry to her forehead until she squeals, delighted.

“She's doing so well,” his mama says softly, watching the pair of them. “I would never have thought – ” 

“Did you upgrade her translators?” he asks, because he can't bear to hear the harmonies in his mother's voice; the quiet song of _I would never have thought you would save a human_. His mama would never judge him. It doesn't mean she hasn't questioned his choices. 

When he had arrived with Freya, half-frantic and convinced he was about to be marched away to a firing squad, she hadn't hesitated. She'd taken a screaming human child from his arms and said _Go_.

“We did. She's doing just fine.”

Freya mashes a palm against Venndred's mouth, chattering softly to herself as she examines his face, his eyes. “Venn-dred,” she pronounces again, solemnly.

“Mater,” he says, formal and careful around the fingers of the little human he saved, at the cost of his career.

“Oh stop,” she says sternly. “As if we wouldn't have helped when you asked for it, darling boy.” She swallows once, twice. The gold of her eyes is bright when she looks at him. “I am so very, very proud of you.”

“But you had to move here. You had to give up – ” 

“And we don't regret it for one moment,” she says firmly. “We never have.”

“But Lenia was your home, and – ” 

She raises an eyebrow. “Lenia is a planet, it is not our home. You are my home. Your father is my home. Freya is my home.” She drops a kiss to the dark of Freya's hair, absent and fond. “Home is a people, not a place.”

His heart aches with love for his mother as she straightens, ruffling his hair. In that moment he wants to tell her. She is one of the few that will understand. One of maybe only two who will not care about the song of his heart and the dreams in his head.

“Mama,” he says, helplessly, pushing Freya's hands away from his face until he can speak clearly. “Mama, I met her.”

She studies him carefully; doesn't ask who.

“Well,” she says at last. “What are you going to do?”

*

The first thing he does is resign from the army.

The next thing he does is bury First Strategist Venn Liesen as deep as he can go.

The last thing he does, is visit the Ismenion.

*

The Ismene is tall, severe. She stands with her hair covered; an iron statue carved from shadow. She walks, Venndred knows, with the old gods. She speaks their names in a time that has long since lost its use for religion.

There are few believers on Lenia, now.

“Venndred Liesen,” she says, and he is not surprised.

The floor beneath his knees is marble; cold and unyielding. “Ismene.”

Her hand touches the top of his head, her fingers light as a feather. “The boy who dreams of fairy tales.”

He flinches, then. How does she know? His rational mind suspects trickery; his soul cries out in vindication. Here, there are gods. Here, they listen.

“Yes,” he says at last. He is awkward, his tongue too dry and his throat too tight. “Yes. That's me.”

The Ismene sighs. “I _know_ ,” she says. “Foolish boy.” For a moment, half amused and slightly hysterical, Venndred thinks she sounds like his grandmother. “Fairy tales are all well and good, but what are you going to do with them?”

“I met – ” he whispers, head still bowed and almost unable to force the words out. “I met – ” 

“ _Everia_ ,” the Ismene says.

It is an old word. A dead word. It was last sung to him by his father, when Venndred was probably ten cycles old, and he is one of the last of his kind to know what it means. It is straight from his childhood, from his heart, and there is a cold kind of fear in knowing exactly who the Ismene means.

_Victory_.

“Is she – ” 

The Ismene leans down; leans forward. “You were always made for worship, Venndred Liesen,” she says, not unkindly. “But you must ask yourself who you will give your devotions to.”

These are not the words he wants. It is not what he needs. He had come half-hoping for answers and a clear path forward, and he is being given more questions. He looks up into the coin-bright eyes of the Ismene and frowns. She stares back at him, unimpressed, and he can't help the grin he can feel at the corners of his mouth.

“You're not so bad,” he says, just to be contrary. It is bordering on heresy and insolence, and he watches the way her facade cracks a little.

“I think you will be better,” she says, and there is the faintest trace of humour in the currents of her voice.

“But what do I _do_?”

She pats his head, condescending and just a little fond. “I'm not here to tell you that. I'm here to make you find out for yourself.”

“That's not much help,” he says plaintively.

“It's not meant to be.”

“I thought oracles were meant to help?”

She laughs then, and helps him to his feet. “You are an acolyte,” she says, “dreaming at the feet of your goddess. You don't need my help.”

*

He thinks of love poems. Of the prose of Archineus; the slow worship of Lessea's lyrics. They are soft, gentle things, not made for war.

He thinks of history, and the thousands of stories he bore witness to as a child. Of how they are the testimony of the dead; the tales of a species who has not yet learnt from its past.

_Fairy tales_ , he thinks. _Fairy tales are not about a happy ending. They are about hope. About making things better._

To make things better, as any good story teller knows, there needs to be change.

He can change.

He can change Lenia.

He goes to the Naos, gets on his knees again, and prays.

*

The Psyke breaks after a month.

A disgraced soldier becomes an apprentice.

It's not quite as simple as it sounds.

*

Three years, six months and eleven days.

Venndred counts each second and learns all he can.

*

“Look at this,” the Psyke says one day, hand hovering over a screen as Venndred wrestles with the sleeves of his own robes. “This is what Lenia faces, daily.”

Venndred looks.

There is a woman on the screen. She is hanging limply, arms strung up above her head. The room she is in is dark; the feed suggests this is live.

Venndred doesn't know how the Psyke came to have this information.

_Her hair is red_ , he thinks absently.

Then, horrified:

_Her hair is red._

He feels as though he has swallowed the sun. He is burning, from the inside out.

_“Tell us where your unit is,”_ someone says, from outside the angles of the camera.

“Is this live?” Venndred asks. He can hear his own voice, hoarse as though he has been screaming for a thousand years. “Is this – ” 

The Psyke is watching him closely. “Yes.”

A test, then, for the man who saved a human once. That stain has never gone, apparently.

The woman mutters something impossible to hear. There is blood dripping from her nose, her mouth. From her chin, as her head lolls forwards. The sight is appalling; blasphemous. It is not for humans to watch, when a goddess bleeds. Venndred flinches from it.

_“Tell me.”_

She mutters again, a low of hum of nonsense, and the Lenian she is with loses patience.

_“What?”_

_“Closer,”_ she slurs, limp and broken. _“Come – ”_

Venndred could tell them it is a trap.

He doesn't.

Footsteps then, through the audio, and the Lenian circles the woman. She is chained in her place, Venndred thinks, like Lybie when she was punished for showing Lenias how to wound the suns. She is still just as dangerous.

_“What was that, ground crawler?”_

_“Come closer, I can't – ”_ Her voice breaks; buckles. The sweetest of lies.

The Lenian bends in, bends closer.

The sickening crunch of her forehead connecting with his nose is enough to have Venndred laughing.

_“Fuck off!”_ the woman roars, through bloodstained teeth. A victor, even as the screen wavers to darkness.

Venndred looks up; looks at the Psyke. The old man is watching him, mouth open in horrified censure. “That human – ” he begins.

His time is nearly done, Venndred thinks. He grins, and takes pleasure in the way the High Priest of the Naos flinches back from him. It is almost right; he has nearly learnt enough. In his soul sings the rage of a goddess; in his heart thunders the blood of a warrior.

“Yes,” he says sweetly. “That human.”

*

The robes of his ascension are pure white. The sounds of the hymns roll through him like thunder.

Most Exalted crowns him with the leaves of the golden Amias tree. Her hands are small, and pale, and steady. Behind her, watching with the rest of the Council, Lord Athannus bows his head as Venndred looks at him.

“You will be very different, I think,” Most Exalted says before she steps back.

Venndred is not sure if that is praise, or censure.

*

He has a duty, a sacred one, and he will make Lenia better for it.

*

When he is older and not at all wiser, humans set foot on Lenia for the first time in recorded history. He is not there to greet them, because he is busy recording the threnodia of a woman who will travel the paths of light before her time. As Psyke he owes her that, and nothing will come before his duty.

“They're interesting,” Athannus says, when he stops by the Naos that evening. “Wing Commander Lane has a certain... diplomatic presence to him.” He tilts his head as Venndred laughs. “It's true.”

“True in the same way a ticking bomb can get people to work together,” Venndred says, because he will always be honest, if he can.

Athannus takes his mask off and sits down with a sigh. Here, in the enclosed space of the Naos, they can be friends. Or something like it. “Maybe,” he says. “Ambassador Lault is everything I expected, and Wing Commander Hird is, perhaps, someone to watch during these talks.”

Venndred has heard of Lane and Lault; he has not heard of Hird. “Who is he?”

“He is a rather angry human woman,” Athannus says ruefully. “She has a certain history with our people that does not make her look kindly on us.”

Venndred whistles. “Well,” he says, “perhaps she won't be as bad as Lane.”

*

He is wrong.

She is worse.

When he sees her, he knows. 

_Oh,_ how he knows.

*

Stories are in his blood; they always have been.

Venndred thinks of impossible things, and loves a woman who is as fierce as Tisiphene herself. He wants to weave her tales of adventure, of bravery and love. He dreams of sitting with her, when there is a moment of peace, and changing the destiny of two peoples. Of turning it into something new and altogether brilliant. 

He wants to recite the poems of Melea into her skin; to press the words of Dereas into her mouth, and count the sacred constellations of her scars.

She is not ready for it yet, he knows, but one day she might be. There's time enough, still.

He's a man who dreams of fairy tales, after all.

He has hope.


	7. Towers of Gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this is a direct continuation of [In Each Place and Forever](), because the amazing Sukka commented and said:
> 
> _Wouldn't wonder if Jay was getting assassinated every other week to the point he'd get jaded about the attacks. Just sits up in the dark when someone comes to slice his throat at night and going "really? Again?? Can i never fucking sleep here?" And when he's about to shoot the bastard with the pistol under his pillow, Samiel has already decapitated the intruder and holds their head up to Jay like "see husband, no need to dirty your hands, go back to sleep."_
> 
> My brain just took it and ran away with it, so thank you Sukka! So, this is set shortly after Samiel becomes King. (Title from 'Never Enough' - Loren Allred)
> 
> Warnings: AU, violence, semi-graphic descriptions of killing, murder not seen as a moral failing (at all), smut, extremely morally grey Samiel and Jay (not their usual selves).

Samiel is kissing him.

They are in the corridor leading off from the throne room. A door's width away, hundreds of the most powerful families on Lenia are waiting for them.

And Samiel is kissing him.

Jay can't help it: he loses himself in the warmth of Samiel's mouth; the trails of heat sparking under his fingertips, as he spreads them greedily across Samiel's jaw. He is smearing gold paint and delicately wrought lines as he does so, and he cannot bring himself to care. There will be a delay - a significant one – because Keos is going to have to reorder the King's appearance, but – 

“Are you actually thinking about – ” Samiel says, half incredulous, between one kiss and the next.

Jay smiles and tips forward again, pressing his lips back to Samiel's. _Yes_.

Samiel pushes closer and hums in pleasure, as Jay palms the back of his neck. _I need to work harder, then._

The thought drifts between them. Jay presses teeth into Samiel's lower lip tugging playfully, dangerously, with just enough force for it to sting sweetly. They can both feel it, and Samiel shivers against him.

Jay is greedy, unsatisfied with just this. He bites harder; feels the soft give of Samiel's lip and licks away the trace of blood he finds there. There is a flare of satisfaction, deep and slow between them. It is in Jay's head, his heart. He breathes in time with Samiel's heartbeat, and wants to drown in the warmth of this closeness.

_Jason_ , Samiel sings in his mind, his soul. Jason, sweetheart, please. I –

Later, Jay will not be able to pinpoint what prompted him. What gave the game away.

A soft prickle of alarm, perhaps; the slightest disturbance of air.

He flinches back in time for the blade to miss his neck by millimetres. The soft brush of steel against the line of his throat is all there is. 

Jay twists, half dropping into a crouch, so the assailant can't get another clear run at his throat. He shoves Samiel back once, hard, and has enough time to feel the bond flare to light between them, in an all-consuming burn, before there is a dark blur of movement.

He raises an arm, blocks the next attack, and has just enough presence of mind to punch his would-be assassin in the stomach. The assailant's knife clatters to the floor and Jay scoops it up. Then, Samiel is there.

He is a streak of golden malevolence, viciously bright in the corner of Jay's eye. He has the assassin's head between his hands. In the same moment, Jay snaps up straight with the knife.

There is the sharp crack of a man's neck being snapped clean in half.

The wet, meaty tear of a blade ripping through a throat.

Jay would be unable to tell you which sound came first.

*

The throne room, when they finally enter it, is utterly silent.

Jay is aware of how this must look. He knows what the Lenians think when they watch him. Human. Vulnerable. The main weakness of the boy they wanted for their king. Samiel was meant to be their saviour; their vicious, victorious monarch. Gold and steel and utter ruthlessness, with no tender mercies.

Now, he is exposed. Crippled, by his choice of consort.

Samiel has not bothered to reorder the delicate lines of paint on his skin. He has not even bothered to try and straighten his clothes or his curls. His lips are still kiss-swollen; his eyes hard.

Their footsteps ring across the marble floor. They are measured and careful. Appearance, Jay knows, is everything. They need to be unhurried; calm. 

What has just happened is obvious. It is painted clearly in the deep spread of gold splashed across the front of Jay's tunic. In the way he can feel his assailant's blood painted across his hands, his face. It is beginning to dry, tacky and itching.

He had been the one to insist on it and Samiel, so compliant, so sweet to anything Jay suggests, had agreed.

_They need to see_ , Jay had said. _They need to know what we are capable of._

He had meant _I_. 

They sit in tandem, Samiel lounging with his legs out in front of him, ankles crossed carelessly, as though he feels as at home on a throne as in an armchair. Jay is bolt upright, neutral, watching everything.

The hollow thud the assailant's head makes as it hits the floor, is enough to have the first row of Lenians flinching back. They scramble out of the way as it rolls a little, coming to a stop near the feet of some unfortunate Lord.

“Well,” Samiel says coolly, lifting his eyes from where his grisly burden has landed. “Is anyone going to explain this to me?” His hands are soaked in blood.

The room is silent.

He tilts his head. “No one? Not one of you has any idea how this man managed to sneak past my guard, into a private chamber, and try to kill my heartsong?” His fingers drum once against the arm of his throne. It is, Jay knows, the only small sign of impatience he permits himself in public.

Still no one steps forwards.

“I will start asking questions,” Samiel says softly. He doesn't need to raise his voice to be heard. “You will not like it when I do.”

There is a small scuffle of movement. 

Jay watches, and notes it is not so much that a woman is pushed forwards, as it is that the people around her draw back. Perhaps conspiracy, then, and they are offering her up as a sacrifice. If nothing else, they must have known what she was intending to do. He carefully studies each and every face moving back into the crowd and commits them to memory. 

Jay tilts his head, lips brushing the shell of Samiel's ear. “Left,” he breathes quietly.

Samiel turns his head. “Dorea Philos,” he says neutrally. “Is there something you would like to tell me?”

The woman startles and looks about herself. Jay can see defeat in the lines of her body, when she realises she is standing alone. She shudders, visible even across the distance of half the room, and he has the briefest flare of pity for her.

“No, Most Exalted,” she says. Her voice is quiet, without inflection.

Samiel leans forwards. “Think carefully,” he says. “We can be civilised about this, Lady Philos. You can tell the truth here, now. Or, you can choose to lie.” He observes her, his face painfully calm. “There will be an investigation. If there is an investigation and I find out you have lied, there will be consequences.” He tilts his head. “Would you like to know what those consequences will be?”

Jay watches, his heart hammering in his chest. Here is Samiel's first test as King. Here is where they find out if he is secure enough in his reputation, his rule, to hold enough sway over public opinion. To force those who might otherwise overthrow him to submit to his authority. 

There is something terrifying about this. Something exhilarating.

Philos slumps a little. “No, Most Exalted,” she repeats.

“I am going to tell you anyway,” Samiel says. He sounds almost kind. “Because I would not want anyone else thinking they can lie to me. Or that they can do what you have tried to do.” He leans back again, his hand dangling casually off the arm of his throne.

_A piece of furniture over three thousand years old_ , Jay thinks briefly, with a sudden burst of inappropriate desire, _and he treats it like a bloody office chair_.

“I will start with your parents,” Samiel says, and Jay watches Philos's shoulders jerk once, in what he thinks is suppressed horror. “I will put them in front of you and make you watch as I have them torn apart, piece by piece.” He is utterly serene; bland in the face of the horror he is reciting. “When I have finished with them, I will take your brothers and sisters and I will have them tied to the whipping posts on the Thios mountains. They will be flogged until you can no longer recognise them, and then I will leave them there to die. Their last breaths will be spent cursing your name.

“Then,” he continues relentlessly, as Philos staggers back a step, “I will take your nephews and nieces. Your children. Anyone in your family who has ever reached their adult years, and I will line them up and have them shot.” The corners of his mouth twitch, as though he is suppressing some deep and violent instinct. “Would you like to know why I would do all this, Lady Philos?”

“You would do it if I lie,” she says, and her voice cracks on the last word.

Samiel stands in a burst of energy. “No,” he says, vehement and vicious. The crowd at the bottom of the steps to the throne flows back, away from him.

Jay watches, and feels the first sweet curl of victory in the pit of his stomach.

“No,” Samiel says. “I would do all of that because you tried to have my heartsong killed. Because you tried to take what is _mine_ and were too much of a coward to face me.” His lips peel back from his teeth in a snarl. “And because you tried to take my world from me, it would be right if I did the same to you. So understand this: if you had succeeded, only when I had taken every last thing from you that you cared about, Lady Philos, would I kill you myself.”

The silence is deafening, broken only by the deep, ragged breathing of Philos as she stares at Samiel.

Jay watches her; watches the way her fingers curl, shaking, into fists. He clears his throat and her head jerks in his direction. He can't see her expression, but he can guess.

“I will ask you,” he says, and watches Samiel take another slow step forwards. The Lenian court parts seamlessly around him.

“Ask,” Philos says hoarsely.

Jay smiles and feels Samiel's satisfaction humming under his skin. “Dorea Philos,” he says formally, “is there something you would like to tell us?”

*

“They're testing you,” Ters says, without looking up from her commlink. “They want to see if you're worthy of him.”

“And if I'm not?” Jay asks.

She tilts her head. “Then you'll be ripped to shreds. Which would be very unfortunate, because it means we would lose Most Exalted as well, and all this effort will have been for nothing.”

“I'm touched,” Jay says dryly. “Your care for my person is truly moving.”

Ters waves a hand dismissively. “You don't need my care of your person; you need my help in ensuring this doesn't happen again.”

“It's already happened,” Jay points out, “multiple times. Last week, someone tried to poison my tea.”

“Heresy,” Samiel says, from where he is buried under a pile of paperwork. Jay squints at him, and realises he is quite literally buried, his hands sorting through piles of books that tower over his head. “What would you do without your tea, _mio ades_?”

“I'll tell you what I wouldn't do,” Jay says, and ignores Ters' heavy sigh.

“Even worse.” Samiel's head pops up over the desk and he grins. “Now you really do have my attention.”

“Most Exalted,” Ters says pointedly, “if you could perhaps take this a little more seriously?”

Samiel shrugs. “I am,” he says. “It's just... do these attempts feel like little things, to you?”

“You mean someone testing the boundaries,” Jay says slowly. "They're trying to work out the best way, and failure doesn't make any difference?”

“Exactly.”

Ters puts her commlink down and studies them both. “You mean they're assessing the best way to kill you, so any failed attempt is merely seen as good intelligence, rather than an unsuccessful assassination?” She frowns. “The idea has merit.”

“So the question is: who wants to kill me?” Jay asks.

“I think a quicker answer might be who doesn't,” Ters says. “You are a human in the Lenian court. Worse, you have the ear of our King.”

“They do actually understand what happens if Jason is killed, don't they?” Samiel asks. “I was quite explicit.”

Jay sinks into the nearest armchair. “Actually, that raises a very good point. What happens to you if someone manages to kill me?”

There is a pause as they all consider this.

“I mean,” Ters says at last, her tone thoughtful. “I mean, technically it is logosykia. It's not something that's been seen for a long time.” Her lips thin as something else occurs to her. “Except once, of course.”

“Yes it really is logosykia” Jay says, “ and I should know. I spent enough time wondering if I was going insane.” He can feel Samiel's amusement and he glares. “Stop it.”

Samiel grins at him. “It's not my fault; I didn't realise it hadn't all been explained to you.”

“I was preoccupied enough with the whole 'courting' debacle,” Jay says sternly. “Believe me, that was more than enough to handle at the time.”

“Yes” Ters murmurs, “we never did get the stains out of the silk carpets on the fourth floor.”

“Each monarch has to leave their mark,” Samiel says. “Centuries from now, the inhabitants of this palace will be telling stories of the things I did for love.”

Jay raises an eyebrow. “Including letting in four hundred sirsin birds, who then crapped all over the carpet?”

“Romantically.”

“Is there any such thing?”

“Most Exalteds,” Ters says, pained, “please.”

Samiel points a triumphant finger at Jay. “There, you see? You are upsetting Ters by making light of our time-honoured traditions.”

“I am making light of the fact that you forgot to mention a bloody soul bond to me,” Jay says dryly. “Which I am assuming, from the rather pained expression on our esteemed Council member's face, means that your life is in as much danger as mine.”

“It does,” Ters interjects, as Samiel opens his mouth. “So I would like a moment of your time to discuss strategy.”

“My strategy has been working well so far,” Samiel says. “We've been killing them.”

“And getting no new information whatsoever,” Jay points out. “Which means they'll just keep coming.”

“Alright, fine. What do you suggest?”

Ters looks at the pair of them and sighs again. “Will you at least let me speak to my contacts? I would like to establish if there is anyone currently attending court who is particularly averse to a human Consort.”

“You mean, more so than every single Lenian currently in the building?” Jay says archly. “Because Ters, that is going to take a lot of questioning.”

“I know,” she says, and it is only because Jay knows her so well now, that he hears the grim note of worry in her voice. “But at least let me try.”

He leans forward and pats her hand. She flinches, startled, then softens almost imperceptibly as she looks at him. “Thank you,” he says gently. “I don't know what we'd do without you.”

“Well I think we'd probably have a lot more paperwork,” Samiel says. His expression gentles as he looks at Ters. “But thank you. Your aid is invaluable.”

Ters stands, picking up her commlink. “I believe you have finally managed to acquire some manners from your Consort, Most Exalted.” She clears her throat, her posture a little awkward. “But you are welcome.”

As she leaves, Samiel smirks at Jay. “See? I'm definitely her favourite.”

*

It is three in the bloody morning, and Jay is carefully tightening his grip around his pistol. He's got his back to the intruder and one hand under the pillow, as he carefully thumbs the safety off. He's breathing steadily, calm and feigning sleep.

This attempt is better than most. Whoever it is has got past the two Severne outside. They've made it across the floor littered with clothes and other obstacles – because Jay is a slob and never bothers to tidy up – and they've almost got to the side of the bed.

_One more step_ , Jay thinks, _one more_. It will bring them close enough. They won't have time to move from a bullet at point blank range.

There is a flurry of movement and the soft, slick sound of a blade through flesh.

In the split second it takes Jay to roll over and aim, Samiel finishes decapitating the intruder.

There is a dull thud as the body hits the floor.

For a moment, Samiel's expression is savage. In the light of the moons coming in through the window, Jay can see the glitter of his eyes, the curl of his lips. His salzon is dripping blood as he stares, furious, at the corpse.

“I was awake,” Jay says mildly.

Something shifts then, rippling through Samiel's body as his gaze snaps to Jay. “You weren't awake quick enough,” he says. His voice is low, deep. “And why should you need to be anyway? I dealt with him. I will deal with all of them for you.”

“Which I believe is half of the problem,” Jay says tiredly. “Your court thinks I'm relying on you to counter their moves.”

Samiel drops his salzon. It clatters to the floor, the noise muffled by the thick carpets. Jay dreads to think what state they'll be in, come morning. He's not particularly picky about mess any more – habits from the Air Force disappeared almost immediately once he had the luxury of space – but blood stains are...

Well. Ters won't be pleased about calling a clean-up crew in again.

“I don't care what our court think,” Samiel says. He takes a step closer to the bed, then another. “I'll kill every single one of them if I have to.”

“Not the most auspicious start to your reign,” Jay says. “There may be objections.”

“Then I'll kill anyone that objects to that too.”

The worst of it is, he's not joking. Jay can see it in the way he tilts his head; in the unwavering conviction he can feel seeping through them both. This is the unfortunate truth: Samiel has a tendency towards violence as a solution. Given a chance, Jay knows, he could be the kind of king who goes down in history for all the wrong reasons.

This is also the unfortunate truth: sometimes, Jay is not as concerned about that as he should be.

“No murdering the entirety of your court,” he says firmly.

Samiel's expression darkens. “They are trying to kill you,” he says. “You think I would place your life before theirs? Any of them? I will rip them apart.”

On the good days, they can joke about this – the persistent attempts on Jay's life. But apparently, Jay thinks, resigned, this isn't one of those days. Perhaps because the assassin managed to get into their bedroom; perhaps because Samiel spent four hours locked in trade talks this afternoon. Or perhaps simply because here, in the dark with nobody else to perform to, they can both admit to being a little more concerned about the whole thing than they would like to be.

Jay sighs. He thumbs the safety back onto his pistol and slides it under the pillow. Then he pats the bed. “Come here.”

Samiel sits down cautiously. “I mean it,” he says.

Jay palms the back of his neck and pulls him closer, resting his forehead against Samiel's. For a moment he simply closes his eyes and breathes. “I know,” he says at last.

“If any of them touch you,” Samiel says hoarsely, “if any of them even come close to it – ” The noise he makes is liquid; silken promise and death. It is utterly alien. Jay has never heard it before, but he recognises it on an instinctive level. It's the sound of a galaxy burning, if he's not careful.

“Samiel,” he says steadily, “that won't happen. I have you, and you know I'm capable of – ” 

“It doesn't matter,” Samiel hisses. “You shouldn't even have to think of things like this. All of them are beneath you. They are unworthy of you in every single way. Their bones don't even deserve to crack under your feet, as you walk across their corpses.”

Jay opens his eyes. This close, Samiel's expression is dangerously feral. He is watching Jay obsessively, greedily. Jay nudges closer still, brushes their mouths together and then pulls back, a hairsbreadth of space between them. “This is still going to keep happening unless we put a stop to it.”

“I'm not above burning them alive,” Samiel says. “If words aren't enough of a warning, I am prepared to take this further.”

There is a running theme of violence, Jay realises. A thread of pure malevolence in Samiel that is not easily contained. That darkness is there in both of them. He thinks, for a heartbeat, of what it would be like if their roles were reversed, and isn't entirely surprised by the realisation he probably wouldn't be any better.

“Retaliate like that and the situation will escalate,” he says, instead of agreeing. “Think, Samiel. All these attempts have been against my life. Mine. Ters wasn't wrong when she said it was a test.” He sighs, and runs his fingers through Samiel's curls. “They're horrified, and frightened and disgusted. They've got everything they could ever want for a King, with one significant problem.”

“You are not,” Samiel says, “a problem.”

Jay twines his fingers tighter in Samiel's hair and tugs. He watches as Samiel's lips part on a soft inhalation; the way pleasure and pain chase across his face. “Not to you. But to everyone else...”

“Jason,” Samiel says. “Don't ask me to stand back when people are trying to kill you.” He tilts his head back, wordlessly complying with the pressure of Jay's hold on him. “Don't make me do that.”

“But that is exactly what I'm going to ask you to do,” Jay says softly. “This has gone on long enough. It is becoming routine, and if we are not careful complacency is going to creep in.”

Samiel stiffens. “I would never – ” 

“Of course you wouldn't,” Jay says. He presses a kiss to the line of Samiel's jaw. “I never said you would. But the time to put a stop to this is now.” Another kiss, harder than the first, and Samiel stills against him. “I want to be able to sleep in our bed,” Jay says, “without worrying that I'm going to wake up to another body. I want to be able to spend time kissing you, without always keeping one eye open in case there's someone lurking in the shadows.”

“You are being manipulative,” Samiel says. He could be cross, Jay knows, but he's not. His breathing is shallow and he shivers a little, as Jay bites gently at the point where his pulse beats hard against warm skin.

“Of course I am,” Jay says, and tightens his fingers further. “Is it working?”

Samiel closes his eyes. “Jason,” he says with a groan. “Why do you think that, out of the entire universe, it is you that my soul chose?”

Jay smiles against the soft, beautiful length of Samiel's throat. “I did wonder what the reasons were.”

“You are a cunning, cynical eudaimon,” Samiel says. “And I love you completely. So you are well aware there were several reasons. Your manipulative nature was only one of them.” The words are drawn from somewhere deep in his chest. Jay can feel the way they hang in the air between them. He moves, mouthing across the hinge of Samiel's jaw, until he can slide their lips together, wet and messy and perfect.

“Get rid of the corpse,” he says into Samiel's mouth, “and we'll continue this conversation.”

*

The members of the Council have never quite known what to make of Jay.

Lenian politics, Jay knows, run on the pretence of a democracy. There are, nominally, elected councillors who help ratify laws, represent the interests of the Lenian people and make sure that everything runs smoothly. They are also technically responsible for electing the next monarch and working with them.

The reality is, that by the time it gets to the election there's usually really only one viable candidate left, and no one is likely to argue with someone who has killed off most of the competition.

Samiel had been their ideal candidate. Young, clever, vicious enough to stand up for Lenia's interests no matter what the cost. Deneira had, if not endorsed him, then at least not raised any objections to him as heir apparent.

By the time they'd realised Jay was going to be a permanent fixture, it had been too late for them to change their minds.

If nothing else, Jay can appreciate the way in which they had swallowed the news and pretended it was their choice. There had been several grand speeches about a new era of diplomatic relations with humanity, and quiet mutterings behind the scenes of _security breaches_. No one had said it to his face, but Jay is well aware of the row that had taken place when Leelia Kasvios had told Samiel it might be advisable for his Consort to maintain a certain distance from political decisions.

“They're not technically infringing on Lenian space,” Katchis Julea is saying now, leaning forwards as he looks at Leelia. “To fire warning shots when they're not even – ” 

“They are testing the boundaries,” Ters interrupts. Behind her mask, her voice is stern. “You know this is a traditional Drakkian gambit, Katchis. They'll keep creeping closer, assessing for weaknesses, and then begin to pick off our outer territories if we're not careful.”

Watching them all, Jay can feel the beginnings of a headache. “Why don't we post additional troops to the outposts?” he asks. “If they are only sending moderate strike forces, then they'll keep their distance.”

Katchis snorts derisively. “It's not about them keeping their distance, it's about them not attacking at all.”

“Then fire warning shots when they do eventually cross into our territories,” Jay says. “You don't have to kill anyone outright. Send diplomatic overtures to High Commander Kyrios, advising him that any incursion into Lenian space will be seen as an act of aggression and will be dealt with accordingly.” Katchis opens his mouth to object, and Jay holds up a hand. “I wasn't finished. When a Drakkian ship does breach our airspace, you give it three warnings to leave. You make sure those warnings are clear, concise and well recorded.”

“That won't – ” 

“And then,” Jay says over the top of Katchis, “you shoot it down and you aim to kill. We release a statement before the Drakkia can cry foul, stating we had previously advised any further incursions would not be tolerated, and nobody can argue otherwise.” He leans back in his chair. “Drakkia respond to aggression. They are looking to test us at the moment, because they think we are a soft target.”

“Aren't we?” Katchis says. “Our leadership has just changed hands, our King is untried, and he has...” he trails off, as though realising what he was about to say, and to whom.

“Go on,” Jay says quietly. “'He has', what?”

“He has you,” Katchis says, and there is a note of defiance in his voice. “You are a liability. A confusion. You are...”

Jay smiles slowly. “You are saying I am a weakness.” He can feel his fingers beginning to curl into fists and he flattens them out, placing his hands on the table. 

“You make the political situation a great deal more uncertain,” Leelia Kasvios says. “You cannot deny that. You are not a Lenian; your loyalties are not ours. Most Exalted says you are his heartsong, but we – ” 

Jay meets her gaze. “If he says it, then who are you to argue otherwise?”

“He is still young,” Leelia says abruptly. “He may not – ” 

“You are telling me that the man who led the troops on Maleva; on Toria; who took the outpost of the Typtich clans armed only with his salzon and backed by ten Severne, is too young and inexperienced? That he wouldn't be able to realise he was being duped? That's the route you're choosing to take here?” Jay's voice is heavy with scorn. “And may I remind the Council that I did not insert myself into the politics here; I did not seek a relationship with the King. I was invited.”

“You must admit that the timing – ” 

“The timing,” Jay says softly, and he can feel his own anger, deep and deadly. “You would like to talk about timing, Councillor?” He looks around the room, and knows the contempt on his painfully bare face is obvious. “Shall we talk about how convenient it is that the Drakkia attack now? They never have before. Or shall we perhaps discuss the fact that every single day I am fending off people sent to kill me, so much so that the act of murder is becoming routine? Or perhaps you would like to have a chat about the dreadful inconvenience it would pose having a King who – if he survived the loss at all – would have to live without his soul mate?” 

He leans forward. “How easy to manipulate he would be then, Councillor. And if he was dead, so much the better, because the candidates left are going to be nowhere near as competent, are they? Nowhere near as clever. How useful that would be for you all, when running Lenia.” 

Jay studies them, one by one. Ters is relaxed in her chair; next to her, Athannus is watching with apparent interest, but he is displaying no real concern. Katchis is tense, either with worry or anger, and Leelia's posture is defensive. The rest of the Council members' reactions range from worry to outright boredom, and Jay silently makes a note of every single one of them.

“Let me be quite clear,” he says gently into the room, and knows it is at odds with the expression on his face. “If it was only me you were harming with your actions, I wouldn't care. It is not. You are placing the life of the man I love in danger.” There is some uncomfortable shifting at the declaration; he ignores it. They are going to have to get used to sentiment, and he does not feel in the mood to tread lightly. “You are aiming for me, but you will hurt him. The second this became about harming my husband, I became very upset indeed.” He bares his teeth, and it is not a smile. 

“Most Exalted – ” Katchis begins nervously.

“I am still talking,” Jay says. 

Katchis wisely shuts up.

“I have been patient,” Jay continues. “I have tried to work with you all, and I am rewarded with the thankless task of dodging attempts to end my life, my husband's life, and our rule. You will forgive me Councillors, but I am only human. I will only tolerate so much.” He sits back in his chair and raises an eyebrow. “You accuse me of diplomatic manipulations, you insult my relationship, and try to lay blame at my feet over Drakkian incursions. Enough. I am most definitely not above violence when necessary, and the next person who so much as thinks of insulting the King, or threatening either of us, will not like what I will do.”

The silence following this is deafening.

Jay stands, the soft scrape of his chair's legs against the marble floor is like a gunshot in the room. Katchis flinches, and Leelia leans away, as though trying to remove herself from the picture.

“Think about what I've said,” Jay says, looking at each of them in turn. “And keep me updated on the situation with the Drakkia.”

His footsteps are loud as he leaves.

He doesn't look back.

*

The last assassination attempt comes at the end of the court session two days later.

Hikesia is an old tradition Deneira didn't bother with. If Jay were being cynical, he would say it was probably because she never wasted time on anything that wasn't to her immediate advantage. But Samiel has brought it back, and the idea has proved popular. The experience is still a relatively new one for the court, but it has the advantage of being a beautiful piece of spectacle, and reminding the upper classes of Lenia that they are not alone in having the attention of the King.

The petitioners today have been an odd mix of the openly curious – both Samiel and Jay are still a relatively unknown quantity, after all – and the downright surprising. The woman who had arrived to complain about the theft of her hover, and then spent most of her time openly admiring Jay, had been particularly memorable. By her third iteration of praising his hair, Jay had been patiently irritated, and Samiel had been downright amused.

_You can't blame her, sweetheart_ , he'd said, the bond between them bright with good humour. _You are stunning_.

_And you are biased_ , Jay had retorted, without taking his eyes off the crowd.

_Obviously_. Samiel had reached out then, twining their fingers together. There had been several audible sounds of disapproval from the court, and several more sounds of delight from the people waiting to be seen.

The last petitioner of the day is a man. He shuffles forwards out of line, head bent, and Jay watches him as the approaches the dais.

“Be welcome,” Samiel says softly. And then, because he can apparently never resist breaking with tradition, “How can we help?”

“I – ” The man's fingers fumble for a moment at the waist of his tunic. His head is still bowed, but Jay catches a flicker of his eyes as he darts a quick look up and then away again. “I want – ” 

There is something there. Something – 

Uneasily, Jay leans forward. Strictly speaking a Consort should be unarmed for official duties. But after the debacle of the last six months, Jay has found that insulting a few of his Severne by carrying a pistol is far preferable to having to improvise when someone inevitably tries to kill him. The weight of his gun is solidly reassuring at his hip as he watches the petitioner.

“”What is it?” he asks, and keeps his voice gentle.

“I'm sorr – ” the man begins.

The gun is not unexpected, nor is the way the man uncoils, desperate, as he lunges for Jay.

Samiel is up and moving as Jay pulls his own pistol, and the screech of steel meeting steel reverberates through the room as Samiel's salzon clips the gun, which is aiming for Jay's chest. Jay swings out of his chair, ducks under Samiel's guard and jams the muzzle of his pistol up under the would-be assassin's chin, just as Samiel's blade slams into his side.

The man screams, dropping the gun and trying to stem his own bleeding. He stumbles back, sinking to his knees.

Jay follows him, crouches in front of him and get a hand in his hair, pulling his head back sharply. “A name,” he snarls. Behind him he can feel Samiel looming, dangerously angry, and has to try to swallow his own rage so one of them can think clearly.

“I don't – ” the man says, breath sobbing, hands pressed to the heavily bleeding wound. “I don't know – ” 

“I can make this quick for you,” Jay says, “or I can make it very, very slow. Your choice.”

“What do you – ” 

“Who hired you?”

The assassin stares at Jay, eyes wide. For a moment he looks young and unspeakably out of his depth. “The Drakkia. The Drakkia hired me.”

Silently, Jay nudges Samiel. There is something else; something in the way the man's eyes flick desperately around the room. He is looking for someone, and he hasn't seen them yet. Whether he expects to be saved, Jay doesn't know. But that's not how Lenia works, and this man is beyond help.

Jay presses the muzzle of his pistol harder into the man's vulnerable skin. He leans forward, until they are scant inches apart. “And who approached you on their behalf?” he asks softly.

“I – ” 

“The truth. Please.” It is not a request.

“Katchis Julea,” the man says.

Samiel is moving before he's even finished speaking. Jay watches people scurrying out of his way as he strides off into the room, and nearly laughs as one particularly unfortunate woman trips over her own shoes to avoid being run over. 

He looks back down at the assassin, and grimaces as he realises he man is bleeding out rapidly. Samiel's blade must have hit something vital, because his tunic is heavy with blood, and his hands aren't so much pressing against the wound now, as digging in clumsily.

“Thank you,” Jay says quietly, and means it.

He puts the muzzle of his pistol to the man's forehead and pulls the trigger.

The bolt is white hot, and at point blank range cauterises the wound instantly. There's barely any blood, and Jay lays the assassin down carefully. Then he stands, ignoring the way his boots are slipping a little in pools of gold, and looks around.

Samiel is returning, and he is hauling Katchis along with one hand. His grip is white-knuckled around the man's collar, and Katchis is protesting vehemently, voice shaking as he skids along in the wake of Samiel's determined stride.

“Most Exalted, I have no idea how – ” 

“Shut up,” Samiel snarls. He hauls Katchis around and forces him to his knees in front of Jay. “Do you have any idea what you have nearly _done_?”

“I wasn't – that is, I only – ” 

“You think what I did to Philos was bad?” Samiel asks. “You think the way I dealt with her was dreadful? It is going to look like a picnic, compared to what I am going to do to you.” There is something deep in his eyes, and dangerous.

Through the bond, Jay can feel obliterating rage, and so much venom it surprises even him. Absently, he touches a hand to his chest and frowns. Under the anger Samiel is terrified, and it is making the fury worse. The violence Jay can feel building is like static under his skin, a warning burn that precedes ground zero of an absolute explosion.

“Samiel – ” he says.

“And you betrayed us as well?” Samiel continues, ignoring him. “You whispered your little plan to the Drakkia, got them to start testing the boundaries so you could – what? Make a deal with them once we were out of the way? Cement your place as the councillor who averted a war?”

“I did it to save Lenia,” Katchis spits out. He is panting, Samiel's grip on his collar half choking the life from him. “I did it so your whore wouldn't – ” 

White out.

That's the only way Jay can describe it. It is as though Samiel's rage has burnt itself into something so pure, so fundamental, that it has wiped out everything that is not static. The sheer force of it leaves Jay breathless and scrambling to organise his thoughts. He can't, because the burn in his blood, his soul, is overwhelming. There is nothing but the screaming silence of pure fury.

“My whore,” Samiel says, voice blank. “That is what you think? My whore.” Slowly his fingers tighten. Katchis chokes once, then again, struggling to breathe around the new pressure.

The rest of the court is silent. No one makes so much as a breath of protest.

“I am going to kill you slowly,” Samiel says. “Then I am going to kill every single person you have ever spoken to. Looked at. So much as smiled at. I am going to burn worlds for what you have tried to do. Do you understand – ” 

Jay exhales, brings his pistol up to bear and pulls the trigger.

Katchis goes down in a spray of gold, and Samiel's hands are empty.

Samiel rounds on Jay. It is instinctive; he is snarling and half mad with thwarted blood lust. “I wasn't done – ” 

“You're done,” Jay says firmly. Then, to the two Severne standing open-mouthed on the dais, “Get everyone the hell out of here and clear this up. The King and I need to discuss a personal matter.”

“Yes, Most Exalted,” the Severne says. His face is half hidden by the visor he is wearing, but there is something slightly more respectful in the way he acknowledges Jay's command.

Jay waits until the last courtier has been ushered from the hall, and the corpses removed. When the heavy doors swing closed, he takes a careful step toward Samiel.

Samiel is watching him, one hand still holding his salzon so tightly his knuckles stand out stark against his skin. There is a fine tremor running under his skin as he stares at Jay, and his expression is set; his eyes cold. “He deserved worse than that,” he says slowly, the words dragged from somewhere deep in his chest. “You should have let me deal with him.”

Jay raises an eyebrow. “And when you'd dealt with him? And the next person? And the next?” He flicks his gaze to Samiel's blade and back again. “Would you ever stop?”

“They don't deserve – ” 

“Maybe not. But you can't protect me forever.”

“I can try,” Samiel snarls. “Don't ask me to do anything less than that. Don't. Because if you are hurt and I could have done something – ”

“It works in reverse,” Jay says, cutting him off. “Do you think I want something to happen to you?” He takes another step forwards. “Do you think I could live with myself, if I let you do something that would put you in danger?” He takes hold of Samiel's wrist, feels the tension in his body and squeezes, hard. “This would have done that. This is not the kind of King you want to be. I will not stand by whilst you make more enemies than you can take on.”

“I could have – ” 

“No. You couldn't.” Jay steps into Samiel, presses close to the lines of his body and tilts Samiel's chin down with thumb and forefinger. They are almost on an eye level, but Samiel has those scant inches on Jay; it is enough that, with Samiel full of anger, he feels a thousand feet taller. “I won't let anyone hurt you either,” Jay says firmly. “Not even yourself. Now drop your bloody salzon, before I make you.”

Samiel startles, and the blade clatters to the floor. “Jason,” he says.

“This is a partnership,” Jay says. “We're equals. That means it's not just me that sometimes needs protecting, alright?”

“It's not about protecting,” Samiel says, and there is a crack in his emotions, something small and broken, and so tiny Jay would almost believe it wasn't there at all, except for the way Samiel is singing in his bones. “It's about – it's about why should you even have to think of them? Why should you have to care? You should let me deal with them, because they aren't worth your consideration.”

That crack in his soul is wider now, and he's staring at Jay. There's a deep vulnerability here, Jay realises. A minefield he's managed to wander into without reading the signs. Samiel's insecurities sometimes come out in strange ways, and this is one of them. He is still trying to prove himself worthy, and the thought makes Jay's heart ache.

“They aren't worth yours either,” he says at last. “So it looks like we're at a stalemate.” He nudges closer still; bumps his nose against Samiel's and murmurs, “So stop trying to take on the universe for me. I'm perfectly capable of doing that myself.”

“I know,” Samiel says, and the harmonies in his voice splinter. His breath hitches. “I know,” he repeats. “I just – ” 

“You just sometimes get a little fixated,” Jay says, and makes sure Samiel feels his amusement. “It's alright. Me too.”

“Jason,” Samiel says again, and this time it's clearer.

“Ah,” says Jay. He drops his pistol, which thumps to the floor, and threads his fingers through Samiel's hair. “There you are.”

“If something happened to you,” Samiel says, and he is shaking, “I would go insane. You do know that, don't you?”

“And if something happened to you,” Jay says, and feels it down to the depths of his soul, “if there was any piece of me left after, I would tear apart every atom of the universe. But,” and he twists his fingers just slightly, just to watch Samiel give way a little, “we can't do that every time it nearly happens. Alright?”

“No,” Samiel says, and for a moment his expression wavers to darkness. “Not alright.” He leans forward, tugging against the grip in his hair. “But I'll let you stop me anyway,” he says into Jay's mouth.

Jay can't help it, he smiles against Samiel's lips and kisses him back. _Stubborn_ , he thinks, and feels Samiel's defiant agreement between them. 

Samiel kisses the way he always does, greedy, a little frantic; as though he is half convinced Jay will be stolen from him at any moment. Jay tightens his grip a little more, gives as good as he gets, and relishes the long, solid line of Samiel pushed up against him. He bites into the soft give of Samiel's lower lip, soothes the sting, then licks into Samiel's mouth. 

Samiel gives way sweetly, humming around the slow slide of Jay's tongue against his own. Jay can feel the way he shivers a little, swallowing down whatever noise he was going to make when they both pull back, breathing into the barest of spaces between them.

“ _Mio ades_ ,” Samiel says. His lips are slick, shining in the white and gold of the room, and Jay wants to wreck him.

He kisses Samiel again, harder this time, hungrier, and Samiel kisses back. Jay slides a hand out of his hair, fists it in the front of his tunic, and feels the slow slide of Samiel's palms down his back, settling on his waist. Samiel's fingers tighten to the point of pain, and Jay's being steered backwards, one step, two, his heels catching on the edge of the dais and – 

“No,” he says into Samiel's mouth. “Absolutely not. No.”

“Yes,” Samiel says, and this time when he pulls away, there's arousal and something a lot like mischief in the way he looks at Jay. “Let me sweetheart, please.”

“Begging will not – ” Jay says, and then air gets stuck in his throat, as Samiel's hand – his long, clever fingers – slide from Jay's hip to rub his hardening cock.

“Please,” Samiel says, and then doesn't wait for Jay's answer. 

He walks Jay back two more steps, hooks a foot behind his ankle and shoves. Jay teeters for a moment, unbalanced. He could recover if he wanted, but Samiel's grinning now, too close and perfect, and looking more like himself than he has since this whole mess started.

Jay sits.

“I'm –” he says, then has to clear his throat at the sight of Samiel sinking to his knees. “I'm fairly certain this is absolutely not allowed.”

“It definitely is,” Samiel says. He slides his hands up the length of Jay's thighs, spread-fingered and proprietary. “I'm sure it's practically written in law that this should be done.” He pops the button on Jay's trousers and tugs the zip.

Jay gives it one more try. “You know we're desecrating a piece of furniture over three thousand years old?”

Samiel makes a small, contemptuous sound as he shoulders his way between Jay's legs. “It's our furniture, I'll do what I like with it.”

“Oh, will you?” Jay tries to sound arch but he can't, too breathless and wound tight. He licks his lips, watching as Samiel pulls his cock free from the confines of his trousers.

“Yes,” Samiel says, and there is something satisfied in the slant of his mouth, “I will.”

Jay's only mostly hard, but when Samiel sinks his mouth down onto him, the slide of it is enough to have him all the way there. He can't bite back the noise he lets loose as Samiel pulls back up, tonguing over the head of his cock. The soft wet heat of Samiel's mouth is perfect, and it drives all thought of ancient, valuable furniture from Jay's head.

“Fucking hell,” he says. He buries his fingers in Samiel's curls, and can't help the hitch of his hips as Samiel hums, delighted.

He can feel Samiel in their bond, aroused and pleased, and slightly overwhelmed by the pinpricks of pain in his scalp, as Jay tightens his grip and tugs. For a moment there is nothing between them but sensation; the slide of Jay's cock as Samiel tries to take as much as he can; the deep burn of pleasure as both of them move in tandem. Samiel sucks gently, and Jay's toes curl.

He's fully hard now, and he can't help pulling, guiding Samiel a little deeper, panting out his pleasure when he almost pushes too far, and Samiel has to swallow or choke on the length of him. The sight of him is gorgeous, a king on his knees for Jay, and no one else.

“Please,” Jay says, and doesn't realise he's speaking aloud, until Samiel draws back a little, mouths at the head and looks up at Jay through his lashes. “Samiel, _please_.”

Samiel scrambles up higher on his knees, pushes against Jay's grasp and kisses him messily. Jay licks the taste of himself away, hauls Samiel closer and kisses him like he wants to swallow him whole. Between them, Samiel gets a hand around Jay's cock and jerks him frantically once, twice, the heat of his palm sliding slickly.

“You're mine,” Samiel is saying between kisses. “Mine. No one else's. _Mine_.”

He means _don't leave me_ , and he means _no one can take you from me_ , and Jay knows this, he does, as he tilts Samiel's head back further – and he has the height advantage for once – and presses teeth into the hinge of Samiel's jaw.

“You're _mine_ ,” he says in return, worrying a bruise that's going to show up, even against Samiel's skin. “And don't you forget it.” It's a promise and a threat rolled into one, and Jay can't help it. After today, after the thought of losing each other, it's – 

Samiel swears, liquid and lovely, and too fast for Jay to catch. He is panting into Jay's temple, his hand still pumping Jay's length. It's as though he's forgotten his own pleasure, bound up in giving Jay his. The thought makes Jay snarl, vicious and triumphant in a way he isn't often. He twists Samiel's hair between his fingers and pulls, painful and tight until Samiel keens, because Jay has always known this weakness of Samiel's; always known what it takes to make Samiel forget everything but him.

“Oh,” Samiel says, an exhalation of hot breath against Jay's neck. “Jason, I want – ” His fingers falter in their rhythm, and Jay feels a sharp surge of arousal. He has made Samiel like this; he has made him lapse for a moment, distracted from what he's doing. Jay can feel himself leaking steadily now, precome easing the way as Samiel's fingers slide back down, but the movement isn't as sure, and it's perfect.

“Could you come just like this?” he asks, against Samiel's ear. He scratches his nails against Samiel's scalp and is rewarded with a sobbing breath. “Just from this? From jerking me off? From having your hair pulled?”

“ _Amisa mio ades lithios dolia mattia_ ,” Samiel gasps out. He squeezes a little, almost too tight to be pleasurable, and Jay's hips work in a rhythm against his grasp. 

“I bet you could,” Jay says. “Want to try it?”

“Jason,” Samiel manages, his thumb smearing down the length of Jay's cock. He's pressed close, and Jay can feel the other hand working frantically, just out of his line of sight. 

“Are you fucking your own fist?” Jay asks, then has to shut his eyes against the image that gives him. “Bloody hell, you are, aren't you? You're so desperate you can't wait.” His voice cracks, warping under his own pleasure as Samiel pants against him.

“I want to – ” Samiel says, and Jay opens his eyes. 

Samiel sinks back to rest on his own heels and Jay follows him, fingers still buried in his curls. The position is awkward, leaving him curved over as Samiel tilts his head back, the space between them a small infinity of distance. From this angle Jay can see Samiel has shoved his own tunic up and pulled his cock free of his trousers. It's hard against his stomach, and for a moment Jay wants to slip off the throne, climb into Samiel's lap and just grind down until Samiel somehow slips inside. 

“I want – ” Samiel says again. He is desperate, all-consuming in a way Jay will never be used to, and instead of following through on his instinct, Jay leans back, sprawls his legs wider and pulls, sharply.

“Go on then,” he says, and he's not going to last much longer.

Samiel does, swallowing Jay down greedily. He wraps a hand around the base of Jay's cock, and tongues the slit. In Jay's soul he is pleasure-drunk, possessively pleased and desperate on the sensation of this.

Jay fists his hands tighter, uses Samiel's curls to pull him closer, fucking up in a mindless rhythm. This time Samiel doesn't choke on it, just slides down further, open and willing and so eager to please. 

The heat of him is nearly enough. The mess he is making, and the soft whimper he lets out when Jay pushes in then draws back, they all have Jay moving faster, carelessly demanding in a way he knows Samiel wants. He can feel it between them, the bond thrumming as he uses Samiel – as Samiel lets himself be used. There is a live wire running under their skins, and Jay can feel the give of Samiel's mouth, the bruise of his lips. He can feel the movement of Samiel's hand, the frantic grasp of it as he slides spit-sloppy and perfect down Jay's length again.

_Mine_ , Jay thinks.

Samiel shudders in mindless pleasure and Jay chokes off a cry. He knows distantly his grasp on Samiel is too tight, but he can't help the way he fucks in once, twice more, ruthless as he starts to come. Samiel shivers around him, swallowing, and Jay can feel the way he tenses, a full-bodied jerk as Jay drags them both over the edge into orgasm.

Jay comes back to himself in pieces. There is the too-hard grip he has on Samiel's hair, making his fingers ache; the trembling muscles in his legs; the way Samiel is breathing heavily, hot and vulnerable against him, mouth slack as he presses his nose into the line of Jay's thigh.

Slowly Jay untwists his fingers, soothing through rumpled curls. He pats clumsily at the line of Samiel's jaw, fingertips bumping against tanned skin. “Samiel,” he says. Then again, “Samiel.”

Samiel mutters something unintelligible, mouthing absently at the cut of Jay's hip. “What?” he manages at last, voice rough and a little slurred.

“There's – ” Jay licks his lips, trying to get moisture back into his mouth as he ignores the soft vibration of Samiel grumbling against him. “Someone's going to come looking for us.”

“You told them to leave,” Samiel mumbles. “Told them to –” He slides back a little, loose limbed and as uncoordinated as he is ever likely to be.

For a moment Jay just looks at him. He is gorgeous; his hair a wild tangle of curls, lips wet and red raw, bruised from the abuse they've taken. There is a bloom of purple on the underside of his jaw where Jay bit him, and his unbuttoned trousers do nothing to hide the length of him. 

_How is it possible_ , Jay wonders, _to want something so badly that you already have?_ He doesn't know, but he tilts forward anyway and presses a soft kiss to Samiel's mouth.

Samiel lets him, then lets him again when once isn't enough. Eventually he draws back, a little more put together, and clears his throat. “We're going to have to walk out of here looking like this,” he says. His voice is hoarse and cracked. It makes Jay want to do wicked things to him, even though there's probably no time.

“Do you think the court will care?” he asks. “If they're still outside at all?”

Samiel sighs. “Trust me, they're still out there.”

“Well then they'll just have to look the other way when we leave,” Jay says. “Although you should probably do your trousers back up first.”

Samiel's gaze flicks down. “You're a fine one to talk.”

Jay shrugs and stands slowly, pulling Samiel up with him. He doesn't miss the faint flicker of disappointment from Samiel as he tidies himself up, then waits patiently for him to do the same. When he does, Jay leans forward, rubs the pad of his thumb across his lower lip, and listens for the pleased little purr he gets in response.

“There,” he says, “presentable.”

“Only to you,” Samiel says, and bites down a little, tracing the line of Jay's thumb with his tongue. “They're going to be talking about this for centuries.”

Jay slides his thumb slowly away. “Better this, than another attempt to kill one of us.”

“I don't think that's going to be a problem,” Samiel says. He hooks a hand under Jay's chin, tilts it up until their eyes meet, and smiles slowly. “I believe there is something much bigger we can point them at.”

Jay sighs. “You want to aim their efforts at the Drakkia.”

“How did you know?”

“Because I was thinking the same thing.”

“Well sweetheart,” Samiel says, “don't you think the idea has merit? After all, they were responsible for the attempted murder of a King of Lenia.”

“Katchis was responsible for that.”

“With their help.”

“Maybe,” Jay acknowledges, “but you have sod all proof of it. Only the word of an assassin, and he's dead.”

“And whose fault is that?” Samiel asks, low and sweet. “I wanted to keep them alive – ” 

“You wanted to torture them,” Jay says. “There's a difference.” He pulls his head back, away from Samiel's grasp, and instead takes his hand in his own. “You declare war on the Drakkia, you're going to need damn good proof before you do.”

Samiel obediently lets himself be steered towards the doors. “I'm leaving that to you.”

“I can't just rustle up – ” 

“You can.” Samiel jerks them to a stop, just before Jay can reach out to open the door. “Give them something, anything. You're clever, you'll make it valid.”

“You are asking me,” Jay says slowly, “to fabricate an excuse to go to war?”

“I'm asking you to make sure we have a valid one, because we already know why we're going to war.” Samiel is watching him carefully. “They tried to kill you. I'm doing this, with or without your permission.”

“You do it without my help, and the Interior Circle will come down on you like a ton of bricks,” Jay say sternly. He tries to ignore the look Samiel shoots him and fails. “You know I'm right.”

“I do. That's why I want you, personally, to make sure this is legitimate.” Samiel tilts his head. “They tried to kill you,” he repeats. “ _Mio ades_ , I'm not letting that stand.”

“They tried to kill _you_ ,” Jay says. “Why do you think I would, either?” He smiles at Samiel's sharp intake of breath. “All I'm saying, is that we have to make sure it's done carefully. It'll solve a lot of problems, but – ” He is cut off as Samiel leans in and kisses him fiercely.

“I trust you,” Samiel says when they part. “I trust you, and you can run this however you want to.”

Jay raises an eyebrow. “You actually mean that.”

“Of course I do,” Samiel says, deadly serious. “I'm going to let you loose on the political landscape, then watch you destroy planets just by smiling at diplomats, sweetheart. It's – ” He licks his lips, nuzzles in closer and presses a kiss to the bridge of Jay's nose. “It's all I ever wanted from you.”

“No it's not,” Jay says quietly. “But I'll let you get away with it for now.”

Samiel pulls back and grins at him. “History will write our story,” he says, “and it'll never mention how sarcastic you actually were.”

“History will write our story,” Jay says, because he can, “and it will never manage to describe how much I love you.” He smiles at the way Samiel looks at him. “And the things I did to keep you safe.”

“Well then,” Samiel says. He takes both of Jay's hands in his, lacing their fingers together. “We'd better get started.”

“God save the Kings,” Jay mutters, and laughs when Samiel rolls his eyes.

Together, they open the doors.


End file.
